Join us on the penultimate podcast from the Games for a look at Argentina’s win in the football, mixed feelings for Jamaica in the 4×100m relays and the prospect of Pearly Kings and Queens taking over the Bird’s Nest stadium.

Paul Radford, Al Himmer, Robert Woodward, Julian Linden and Paul Majendie join me around the laptop. Sorry about the end-of-term feel.

There are 21,600 reporters covering the Olympic Games, the vast majority from outside China, and a lot of them will be going home with a nasty taste in their mouths.

Al Himmer and Erik Kirschbaum blogged about their experience of crash-dieting during the Olympics, with most of the venues offering only cookies and bananas for reporters putting in 10 or 12 or 14 hours covering a sport.

Inside the Main Press Centre, there is plenty of food to be had. It’s not going to win any gourmet awards but the turkey on whole wheat is just fine and it’s hard to go wrong with a salad bar.

Sadly, it’s the Chinese food that is the real letdown.

Beijing is a city in which any given alley offers everything from noodle soups to savoury pancakes to fresh hot soy milk, and it is difficult to forgive Olympic caterers for reducing a culinary culture so rich and varied to a mushy blandness.

For those of us who live in Beijing, this dietary disaster is only a temporary privation — in a couple of days the Games will be over and we can once again eat three meals a day from three different regions of China if we so chose.

But it’s my colleagues from out of town who I feel sorry for. After several weeks in Beijing, many have had no chance to experience the pleasant surprise of biting into a soup-filled dumpling. They have not slurped the cilantro-spiced broth of a bowl of beef noodles or felt their tongues go numb from Sichuan peppers.

What a pity if they return home thinking chow mein and fried rice are the real deal.

Listening to journalists bellyache about how tough life is at the Games gets old pretty quickly, but there is one genuinely frustrating aspect of the Beijing media beat — finding something to eat.

The Main Press Centre has a cavernous dining area with food from around the world but reporters out at the venues are typing to the sound of rumbling stomachs — with nothing more than a few nuts and berries available anywhere near the stadiums.

They’re not complaining — just hungry — and in the interest of telling you what life is really like here I thought I’d share their stories. Over to Al Himmer, our man at the basketball, who sums up the situation nicely:

Normally I wouldn’t eat a burger from a fast food joint if you paid me $100. After less than a week of the Beijing Olympics I would sell my granny for one. (Sorry, nan but you’ve had a good innings).

How much did organisers spend on these state-of-the-art facilities? I could look it up but I’m too weak. Suffice it to say it was a wodge-load of cash yet no one thought to stick in a café. I’d be willing to offload another family member for a triple tall latte and a sticky bun.

The basketball venue offers bananas at breakfast, lunch and dinner. There is a mystifying system for pre-ordering meals for the FOLLOWING DAY at this, and many other venues. “But I may not be hungry or have time to eat it tomorrow, and I’m hungry NOW!”

One Reuters colleague told us he’d lined up with punters for half an hour in the scorching heat for a hotdog at the tennis venue, only to be told when he reached the counter that they didn’t actually have hotdogs, or indeed anything else apart from crisps.

Another of our reporters has resorted to scavenging through the bins and yesterday she proudly informed fellow sufferers that she’d dug out a half-nibbled sandwich and half a tub of yoghurt, which she promptly wolfed down.

Other journalists, meanwhile, have it easy. The baseball writers happily tuck into burgers and slurp beers in the pressbox, while others stroll to monster shopping malls just across the road. That’s nice for them.

Now, where are those crisps?

PHOTO: Visitors buy lunch at a food court inside the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) during its opening in Beijing July 8, 2008. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV

Michael Phelps made the headlines once again – most of them including the word “pantheon” — as he made it three gold medals and three world records from three finals so far.

The American now has nine career Olympic gold medals to his name and will almost certainly break the record he now shares with four other athletes when he swims in two finals tomorrow.

Phelps’s achievement is extraordinary, and has set the Games alight, but to my mind there was greater excitement away from the Water Cube on day four.

The best action came during a terrific struggle in the basketball, with heavily-fancied Spain coming from behind to beat China in an overtime thriller. Perhaps Spain are trying to lull the U.S. into a false sense of security.

There were other good stories away from the pool. Togo won their first medal, in kayaking, while a Texan hunter, Walton Eller, beat an Italian policeman in the men’s double trap shooting.

There’s a new feature on the blog today. If you look to the right you’ll see a fantastic medals table “widget”. Feel free to add it to your own blog by following the “Get this widget” link.

We did another podcast, mostly about Phelps but with some interesting factoids on the Greco-Roman wrestling, and Mitch Phillips argued that you have to look outside the pool for the greatest Olympian in history. On the frothier side, I particularly enjoyed Al Himmer’s story from the basketball the other night, if only for this headline: “Step away from the crisps, sir.”

Click here to find out what that’s all about and please pop back tomorrow. Remember, comments are open on all stories here on the blog and we love to hear from you.

Kevin Fylan, Beijing