Olympic Memories, Part II

Because of our little subway misadventure we were about 45 minutes late getting to the athletics.  Nonetheless, the Olympic Park was amazing, a true sight to behold.  I got some great video, which I will be posting later today, after I get all my memories recorded in these posts.  As I said before, our seats were phenomenal.  Here’s a panoramic view I stitched together from about six different photographs.  (I won’t embed it because it’s too large, click here to see it.)

The men’s long jump was taking place right in front of us.  Off to the left were the discus, hammer throw, and shot put.  To the right was the pole vaulting, which when you see it in person is actually a hell of a lot of fun.  Something odd about the place was the lack of concessions.  They didn’t really have any food other than potato chips or popcorn, so if you went there expecting to buy a hotdog or something of that nature you were pretty much shit out of luck.  Thus if you bought tickets for multiple events and were going to be at the stadium all day there wasn’t really anything to eat.

There was, however, a McDonald’s on the way into the stadium.  And let me tell you, this is the most elegant Mickey D’s you’ll ever see in your life.  Massive.  But there’s no way that McDonald’s paid to have the only food in the stadium; they’d have paid to have McDonald’s for sale inside the stadium otherwise.  This is just a cultural difference.  There were also, surprisingly, no t-shirt sellers that I could see anywhere.  At major US sporting events you can’t go ten feet without someone trying to sell you a souvenir, but other than one little stand selling stuffed fuwa dolls I didn’t see anyone peddling anything.

The one thing the Chinese did get right, however, was the beer.  They were ¥8 each, which is about $1.12, for a large beer, the size you’d get in the US.  Accordingly, we proceeded to get completely shitfaced.

A few of the evening’s highlights:  when the medal winners were announced for the long jump Cuba came in second.  As the guy was taking his victory lap he came near our section, and was maybe 20 yards from where we were at, I yelled “Viva Fidel!” The guy just turned and looked at me like “fuck you, asshole,” which of course made me laugh even harder.

All the cameramen were wearing these blue vests with BOB written on them, with a number underneath.  This brought a number of jokes that all the cameramen were named Bob so they had to assign them numbers to avoid confusion.  The BOB working in front of us was 118, so we started saying, “Hey BOB 118, you’re doing a hell of a job.  BOB116 isn’t half as good as you!” After a while BOB118 walked past us again and we yelled out “Great work BOB118!” Then my friend, who is from the UK, yelled out “BOB112’s a cunt!” (For those of you who don’t know, in most of the world “cunt” does not carry the fainting-woman cultural significance that it does in the US.) At any rate I thought I was going to pee myself laughing.

There were three significant athletic memories of the evening.  One was when an American woman won gold in one of the events, hurdles I think, so I got to stand up, wave the flag I had brought with me, and butcher our national anthem in my horrible singing voice.  Then there was one event, the men’s 400m hurdles if I remember correctly, where the US had three runners and won all three medals.  (I have that event, and my drunken cheering reaction to it, on video.) Me and all the Americans around us were going insane when they announced the winners and USA was after all three names.  When the guys took their victory lap I got to reach down and shake their hands as they went past and congratulate them, which was super awesome.

The final event was for the Russian pole vaulter, who on her last vault broke the world record.  She’d done a few vaults before and had just barely knocked the bar off each time.  This was the last event of the evening, and the stadium got quiet as she prepared.  When she went over and won the world record the place went insane.  We were all screaming “Russia!” and “Russkie!” as she ran past. 

Honestly, if someone had told the Reagan-era Cold War teenage Lee that one day he’d be living in communist China and cheering for the Russians at the Olympics I would have laughed in your face.  But there I was, yelling as a true admirer of what she had just accomplished.  It was a great moment.  As I’ve mentioned before we go to Russian clubs a lot here, and I have to admit that I really like Russians as a people.  I’m really looking forward to visiting Russia someday.

I was so excited about being there for the presentation of the medals to the three American runners when they made the announcement that the medal ceremonies for the men’s 400m hurdles and the women’s pole vault would be held tomorrow.  In other words, get the fuck out.

Speaking of getting out, there’s one noteworthy cultural thing I’d like to point out.  China had a number of athletes competing that night.  As soon as the final event in which one of them was competing had finished, I’d say 2/3 of all the Chinese got up and left. They didn’t give a shit about anything else.  Athleticism?  Sportsmanship?  Spirit of the Games?  Bah, not important.  The entire point of these games is to stoke China’s already rampant nationalism.

Let me put it this way.  On China’s state-run CCTV networks they show two things:  China winning, and other major countries (US, UK, Europe, Australia, etc.) losing.  That’s it.  There really wasn’t any point in watching the games on TV unless you were watching the pirate satellite feed from the Philippines, because the Chinese government wouldn’t show anything on TV where China was beaten.