LON­DON-Around the 2012 Olympics and its host city with jour­nal­ists from The As­so­ci­at­ed Press bring­ing the fla­vor and de­tails of the games to you:

Post-ride par­ty

He rode. Then he cut loose. Af­ter win­ning the time tri­al for his sev­enth Olympic medal, cy­clist Bradley Wig­gins marked the mo­ment by get­ting "blind drunk." It was a very pub­lic binge, with Wig­gins post­ing mes­sages and pic­tures on Twit­ter as he cel­e­brat­ed gold near St Paul's Cathe­dral. "Get­ting wast­ed," he tweet­ed, ac­com­pa­nied by a pic­ture in which he was pos­ing with a drink and flick­ing the V for vic­to­ry sign. And Wig­gins wasn't slow­ing down. Lat­er, the Tour de France cham­pi­on tweet­ed: "Blind drunk at the minute...it's been emo­tion­al." British Olympic chief Col­in Moyni­han says Wig­gins was "thor­ough­ly en­ti­tled to have a fan­tas­tic par­ty."

-Rob Har­ris

http://twit­ter.com/rob­har­ris

Flick­er­ing flame

The caul­dron is burn­ing bright at 80,000 seat Olympic Sta­di­um, where ath­let­ics be­gins to­day and that fa­mous flame is flick­er­ing every­where around the are­na, thanks to the video boards show­ing it. Ap­par­ent­ly it's not enough to just have the re­al deal on hand, stand­ing at one end, where it was moved af­ter be­ing on the grass in­field dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. The screens con­stant­ly car­ry­ing close-ups of the caul­dron are rem­i­nis­cent of the fake fire­place that NBC used on its sets for broad­casts from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Try­ing to lend stu­dio seg­ments a warm and cozy feel, the net­work set up a screen that showed video of a fire, re­plete with waft­ing smoke.

- Howard Fendrich

http://twit­ter.com/Howard­Fendrich

All Chi­na fi­nal

Chuang Chih-Yuan of Tai­wan played Thurs­day's ping­pong semi­fi­nal against Wang Hao of Chi­na. Chuang lost, mean­ing Wang will face com­pa­tri­ot Zhang Jike in an all-Chi­na fi­nal. Had Chuang won, it would have added a bit of pol­i­tics in­to the mix. Tai­wan is a self-gov­ern­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic is­land, which split from Chi­na amid civ­il war in 1949. Chi­na, how­ev­er, re­gards Tai­wan as a rene­gade province. A fi­nal be­tween Chi­na and Tai­wan would have raised all kinds of in­ter­est­ing ques­tions. For ex­am­ple: Large parts of the world would not have seen it as an all-Chi­na fi­nal, though that's cer­tain­ly how Chi­na would have seen it. Tai­wan doesn't even get to use its flag or re­al name in the Olympics, where it is iden­ti­fied as "Chi­nese Taipei."

-Stephen Wade

http://twit­ter.com/Stephen­Wade

Row­er de­tained

A bit of trou­ble for an Aus­tralian row­er yes­ter­day morn­ing: Josh Booth was de­tained by po­lice for al­leged­ly caus­ing dam­age to a Lon­don store­front. Au­thor­i­ties say it was an al­co­hol-re­lat­ed in­ci­dent, and it hap­pened hours af­ter he com­pet­ed in the men's eight at the Olympic row­ing basin. Aus­tralian team chief Nick Green says Booth faint­ed while at the po­lice sta­tion and was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal. He was re­leased a short time lat­er and was not charged. Green, who says he re­ceived a call from po­lice at 3 am yes­ter­day about the in­ci­dent, says he'll make a de­ci­sion on po­ten­tial dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion af­ter he re­ceives more in­for­ma­tion from the po­lice and Booth. The 21-year-old Booth made his Olympic de­but as the Aus­tralians fin­ished sixth in the six-crew fi­nal of the eight at Wind­sor out­side Lon­don on Wednes­day.

-Den­nis Pas­sa

http://twit­ter.com/den­nis­pas­sa

Pho­to on the fly

While his col­leagues blogged, tweet­ed and filed sto­ries with their smart­phones and tablets from a me­dia boat on Wey­mouth Bay dur­ing the Lon­don Olympics re­gat­ta, vet­er­an British sail­ing scribe Bob Fish­er re­galed them with a yarn about how the games were cov­ered 40 years ago.

Fish­er re­called be­ing on a me­dia boat on the open­ing day of sail­ing at the Mu­nich Olympics-the sail­ing venue was in Kiel-when a pho­tog­ra­ph­er from an evening news­pa­per in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, board­ed with a wick­er ham­per.

"In it wasn't his lunch," Fish­er said.

Turns out the ham­per con­tained a car­ri­er pi­geon. Fish­er said that af­ter tak­ing a pic­ture of Den­mark's Paul Elvstrom at the start of the Sol­ing race, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er put his cam­era in a chang­ing bag, snipped off a neg­a­tive, rolled it up tight and put it in­to a screw-top alu­minum can. He strapped the can­is­ter to one leg of the car­ri­er pi­geon and re­leased it.

"That pic­ture ap­peared on the front page of the Copen­hagen pa­per that evening," Fish­er said. "Here's a guy who thought on his feet. Ob­vi­ous­ly he'd done it be­fore, or had prac­ticed it."

Fish­er has writ­ten 35 books and is work­ing on three more books about the Amer­i­ca's Cup, in­clud­ing one ti­tled, The Poi­soned Chal­ice.

-Bernie Wil­son

http://twit­ter.com/berniewil­son

104 medal and count­ing

A row­ing club found­ed near­ly 200 years ago and lo­cat­ed on the leafy banks of the Riv­er Thames is cel­e­brat­ing an ex­tra­or­di­nary mile­stone achieved at the Olympic Games. Mem­bers of the Le­an­der Club, which claims to be the most suc­cess­ful sport­ing in­sti­tu­tion in the world, had won 99 Olympic medals for Britain dat­ing back to 1908 be­fore the start of Lon­don 2012. Well, they've just topped the 100 mark. Five mem­bers of the Hen­ley-based club were part of the British men's eight that cap­tured bronze in Wednes­day's thrilling fi­nal at Dor­ney Lake. That re­sult sparked a mass clink­ing of glass­es as the Le­an­der of­fi­cials who failed to land tick­ets for the race packed in­to the din­ing room and bar area at the club to watch it on gi­ant TV screens. "Ob­vi­ous­ly it's a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone, but it's part of our long-term plans to car­ry on be­ing the main feed­er club of new tal­ent in­to the GB in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem," says Le­an­der of­fi­cial Robert Tre­harne Jones. Heck, many coun­tries haven't won 104 Olympic medals. That's not the end of the mat­ter. There are still 14 Le­an­der row­ers in­volved in fi­nals at Dor­ney Lake over the next three days .

-Steve Dou­glas

http://twit­ter.com/sdou­glas80

She's a spec­ta­tor now

Five-time Olympian Na­tal­ie Cook was elim­i­nat­ed from the beach vol­ley­ball tour­na­ment, but ex­pect to see the Aus­tralian around Horse Guards Pa­rade for the du­ra­tion of the games.

Cook has said she will re­tire from in­ter­na­tion­al play af­ter Lon­don, but she said she wants to watch the beach vol­ley­ball com­pe­ti­tion through its com­ple­tion.

Cook ex­pressed her re­spect for two-time de­fend­ing gold medal­ists Misty May-Tre­anor and Ker­ri Walsh Jen­nings, and said she con­sid­ers them the fa­vorites. The Amer­i­cans lost their first set in three Olympics on Wednes­day night.

-Jen­na Fry­er

http://twit­ter.com/jen­nafry­er

Farewell bad­minton

A Chi­nese bad­minton star says she is call­ing it quits af­ter be­ing dis­qual­i­fied from the dou­bles tour­na­ment at the Lon­don Olympics for try­ing to lose. A com­ment on a ver­i­fied ac­count for Yu Yang on the Ten­cent mi­croblog­ging ser­vice late Wednes­day read: "This is my last game. Farewell Bad­minton World Fed­er­a­tion. Farewell my dear bad­minton."

Yu and Wang Xi­aoli were one of four dou­bles teams which ap­peared to play poor­ly on pur­pose to se­cure a more fa­vor­able po­si­tion in the next phase of the event.

- Scott Mc­Don­ald

http://twit­ter.com/Bei­jingScot­ty

Two-for-one show

US gym­nast Danell Ley­va's high bar rou­tine is bet­ter than any cir­cus act-a two-for-one show, ac­tu­al­ly. While Ley­va daz­zled the crowd with three re­lease moves, his step­fa­ther and coach, Yin Al­varez, was do­ing the rou­tine right along with him down on the floor. Fans laughed as Al­varez dipped, swayed and gave lit­tle kicks of his feet, and he couldn't con­tain him­self when Ley­va hit the mat with an em­phat­ic THUMP! He jumped up and down and then grabbed Ley­va in a bearhug, plant­i­ng a kiss on the top of his head. When Ley­va's score flashed, guar­an­tee­ing he would win a medal, fa­ther and son cel­e­brat­ed again. Ley­va won the bronze in the all-around com­pe­ti­tion.

-Nan­cy Ar­mour

http://twit­ter.com/nrar­mour

Olympic tax break

US Sen Mar­co Ru­bio wants to give Amer­i­ca's Olympic cham­pi­ons a tax break on their win­nings. Amer­i­cans who win gold, sil­ver or bronze at the Olympics get a cash award from the US Olympic Com­mit­tee of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars. The Re­pub­li­can law­mak­er in­tro­duced a bill Wednes­day that would ex­empt medal win­ners from pay­ing tax­es on the hon­o­rar­i­ums, call­ing the penal­ty ridicu­lous. The USOC says a gold medal­ist gets $25,000, a sil­ver medal­ist $15,000 and a bronze win­ner $10,000. What about NBA stars on the bas­ket­ball team like the Mi­a­mi Heat's Le­Bron James? Ru­bio's of­fice says that the Olympics are unique, with US ath­letes vol­un­teer­ing to rep­re­sent the coun­try, and that suc­cess should be cel­e­brat­ed, not taxed.

ED­I­TOR'S NOTE - Eyes on Lon­don shows you the Olympics through the eyes of As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists across the 2012 Olympic city and around the world. Fol­low them on Twit­ter where avail­able with the han­dles list­ed af­ter each item.