Hands up anyone who’s really surprised that the Chinese government is continuing to block full internet access to the media covering the Beijing Olympics. Anyone? No, I thought not.

Apparently, it’s not a surprise to the International Olympic Committee either. Despite assuring the world that things would be different, it has been revealed that the IOC knew all along that there was no intention to allow free access, even to the media.

So why go through the charade? Why try to convince us that the leopard really could change its spots? It makes no sense whatsoever.

But creating a brouhaha over internet access for the media is a joke anyway. Any media outlet worth its salt would be able to gain access to any site that it needed from outside of China and get the information to journalists by phone or e-mail. And why would journalists wait until they got to China before trying to find out info on Falun Gong or Tibet?

Despite all the tight control, the Chinese government could not stop footage of opening ceremony rehearsals being released on the pesky internet. Perhaps they’re right, the internet can’t be trusted – it’ll publish anything!

More noteworthy is the fact that athletes are expected to compete in conditions more polluted than a 19th-century factory. Again, no one is surprised and the very late and half-hearted attempts to solve the problem were never – ever – going to help that much.

Why also is the IOC tolerating the Olympic venues being turned into martial-law zones with 500,000 troops, police, commandos and volunteers deployed to counter any terrorist threat? To put that into context, that is more troops than were deployed for either of the Gulf wars. Just a bit of overkill?

The awarding of the Beijing Olympics were the last significant act of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch – discounting getting his son appointed as Spain’s representative on the IOC – before handing over the reins to Jacques Rogge.

Getting the Games to China had been a driving ambition for Samaranch, who was reportedly furious that Beijing lost out to Sydney for the 2000 effort. This begs the obvious question - why?

With all of the problems facing the Beijing Games, most of which were easily predicted, why the desperate drive to get the Olympics into China? It is a closed society, it has questionable human rights practices, it is an environmental nightmare and it has a chequered past with regard to doping. Not much to endear it to the global community.

There’s no doubt that in the cloistered Neverland that is the IOC boardroom, they believe that the IOC has the abilities of a fairy godmother, but their magic wand doesn’t seem to work in China (perhaps it’s made in Taiwan).

Under Samaranch, the IOC was more about helping its own members get rich and live a life of luxury. Hopeful bidding cities would spend millions carting the genitals of IOC members around the world in the hope of garnering favour. Samaranch himself was kept in the finest suites in luxury hotels, he was whisked to private boxes and wheeled out at the end of the Games to declare them “the best ever”. Of course, it's all different now - wink, wink.

Awarding Beijing the Games was about little more than securing Samaranch’s legacy and it is perhaps deserving that it is all starting to smell like a dead fish. Let’s just hope that the athletes can deliver what the administrators seem incapable of - a tournament  to remember - for all the RIGHT reasons.