It's lucky Day 13 here in Athens, and as competition gets underway the USA and China are still neck-and-neck at the top of the medals chart - with 25 and 24 golds respectively. But America's overall total of 76 soundly beats China's 52. Meanwhile, in the battle for third place, Australia has surpassed Japan with 16 golds to 15 - and Australia also has a larger overall total - 42 to 34. In competition today, medals are up for grabs in athletics, the men's triathlon, diving, football, hockey, water polo, wrestling, sailing, taekwondo and modern pentathlon.

It was another triumphant night for the hometown crowd in the athletics stadium as Greece's Fani Halkia shot out ahead of the pack to win the women's 400-metres hurdles gold. She had already set a new Olympic record in the qualifying round. World champion Jana Pittman of Australia led for three fourths of the race, but her recent knee injury forced her to fall back into fifth place.

In the 200-metre race, Jamaica's Veronica Campbell held off the 18-year-old American Allyson Felix to take the gold - her country's first 200-metre Olympic title. Felix's silver-winning run set a new world junior record, and Debbie Ferguson of the Bahamas claimed the bronze.

Cuba won their third Olympic baseball gold medal last night, beating Australia 6-to-2, with a two-run home run in the fourth inning and four more runs in the sixth. And Brazil's beach volleyball team claimed the men's gold medal here with a 2-1 victory over Spain.

The United States men's indoor volleyball was on the brink of defeat when it rallied to beat the Greek team in last night's quarterfinal - it will be the Americans' first appearance in an Olympic semifinal in 12 years. They'll play Brazil tomorrow for a chance to go to the final.

The women's football final takes place tonight, with the Americans battling Brazil for the gold medal. The USA is the favourite to win gold.

And while two Russians, an Azerbaijani and a Hungarian won Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling gold last night, the emotion in the arena was all for American Rulon Gardner, the Sydney champion who made a miraculous recovery from a devastating accident to come here and defend his title. He ended up with the bronze medal and quietly announced his retirement from competition. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.

The Russian duo won the gold medal in synchronized swimming last night, beating the Japanese and American duos into silver and bronze positions. Team competition takes place tomorrow. Meanwhile, competition in another frilly looking but physically demanding Olympic sport - rhythmic gymnastics - gets underway here in Athens today, with finals on Saturday and Sunday. Today also sees the beginning of competition in taekwondo and the modern pentathlon, in which competitors run, swim, shoot, fence and ride horses for gold.

PERSONAL NOTE: MY BIG FAT GREEK OLYMPICS

The Greeks have a reputation as procrastinators, and not without reason. Three years into the seven-year Olympic preparation period, The Athens organisers (ATHOC) had only manage to form a few committees - no actual work had begun. But it's not as if they're incapable - the project became a sprint to the finish line, a panicky last-minute flurry of construction that they accomplished with surprising style (and a lot of help).Compare this to Sydney, which completed all its Olympic venues 18 months before the Olympics so they could test transport, security and crowd control. But never mind, it all seems to work here. Well, mostly. The venues themselves are absolutely gorgeous, but there is a rather chaotic feeling about them - wacky crowd control systems, general mismanagement (why do all venues run out of food less than halfway through the events?), chaotically designed press areas. Fortunately the competition is so well-staged that none of these behind-the-scenes things really matters.

One of the best things about most Olympics is the volunteer force, thousands of locals who give their time to make the Games machinery run, guiding spectators and officials and competitors and media to make sure everyone is in the right place with all their questions answered. Well, it's not exactly news that Greeks have rather, erm, strong personalities. And as a result, the volunteers here are possibly the most negative aspect here. While many are friendly and helpful (and almost criminally tanned and beautiful), the majority seem to have strong control-freak issues, making unreasonable demands on almost everyone they meet. I can't even begin to count the run-ins I've had as they force me to do inane things like walk completely around a large stadium, outside the perimeter fence, so I can enter into a different door that's only about 20 metres from the point I was standing talking to them (this has happened to me four times, and only depends on who the volunteer manning the door is - others will kindly let me in). These power-mad volunteers also guarantee that there are vast empty stretches of seats in the venues, because they won't let anyone sit in seats designated for officials or Olympic "family members" - even if none of those people are there. This means that the press, sponsors and other accredited people have to sit around the edges of these empty areas. The exception to this rule seems to be their fellow volunteers, who are allowed to sit and go wherever they want. These are not isolated experiences - a friendly, accommodating volunteer is by far the exception rather than the rule. And it's interesting to me that the atmosphere is otherwise so wonderful that the media isn't reporting this. Although all of us are experiencing it and talking about it.

[by Rich Cline]