SWIMMERS competing at the Games can pack light. All they have to bring is a suit, goggles and a cap. For the synchronised swimmers, add hair gel and glitter.

Most track and field athletes can get by with minimal baggage too. Shirt, shorts, shoes, maybe a jacket and pants, and they're ready to toe the line.

Same for gymnasts, who need to pack only leotards or pants and shirts. The uneven bars, balance beam, parallel bars and pommel horse are provided.

But for the real horses, which must spend a week in quarantine, travelling isn't so simple.

The process also can be complicated for pole vaulters, who must check their poles, pay extra baggage fees and hope the equipment they love will show up at the other end, which doesn't always happen, especially on trips to out-of-the-way places.

"When you start switching airlines, that's when you start losing poles," said American champion Jenn Stuczynski, who has lost poles but later got them back.

Even the shortest trip requires a mountain of red tape and careful preparation for athletes in shooting sports. Like fencers, shooters can't carry their weapons on board commercial airline flights and must pack them and check them as luggage.

Kim Rhode, who won two gold medals and a bronze in double trap shooting and will compete in skeet shooting at Beijing, goes through a tedious routine each time she travels.

She must unload her gun, place it in a packing case, sign a declaration at the check-in counter that it's unloaded, lock it and bring it to Transportation Security Administration agents. They may open the case before it's scanned and loaded into the plane's cargo hold.

"When we get to another country, we pick it up on the other end and we once again have to go through customs and declare it," Rhode said. "And, of course there's tons and tons of paperwork we have to fill out prior to doing that. Before we get there, even.

"Basically they check all the serial numbers on the gun. So they have to open it up again, they verify all the serial numbers are correct with all the paperwork that we filled out. They'll usually either stamp it, give us a little piece of paper with a stamp on it or a signature or whatever."

From there, she said, the shooters would take the guns to a police station or the competition shooting range, where they were locked up. Sometimes, police officers would take the guns directly to the shooting facility.

Getting horses to the Games takes extensive planning. Because of China's quarantine laws and a lack of suitable sites, the Olympic equestrian events will instead be held in Hong Kong.

Los Angeles Times