So, did China blow an opportunity for a "Greatest Ever" Torch lighting?

"What's that Raym?  What could be better than Barcelona's wonderfully simple yet magnificent flaming arrow?  Nothing could eclipse that!!!"

Yeah, how about an ACTUAL eclipse?  

August 1, 2008, and China is co-host to a TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE.  To light a torch at the moment when the corona appears in midday...  Of course, the eclipse happened in the middle of Nowhere'sville, NW province, but if a bunch of hippies can light a fire in the middle of the Nevada desert, I'm sure the inscrutibles could find a way - and then they could drag the torch into the stadium, maybe on the backs of slave labor or something else culturally significant, just in time for the dousing at the closing cermonies.

the whole 8/8/08 thing is so, well Western - if not commercial, certainly trite and trivial.  8/8/88 is fine for something as insignificant as the first night game at Wrigley Field...   I would hope the OLYMPIC movement would have a little more weight.

It's a Western calendar, after all:  the Chinese year has no particular rhyme or reason.  Now, to relate the Opening (or Closing) to a natural cosmic phenomenon that has importance and significance to every cultural in human history, literate or illiterate.

Nah, that wouldn't work, not when a superior linkage like 8/8/08 is so close.