Bev Wake keeps an eye out for the witty, wild and plain ridiculous.
The old and the restless:
If you think the Olympics are for the young, you’d be mostly right — the average age is about 26. The youngest, swimmer Gaurika Singh of Nepal, will be just 13 years and 255 days old when she competes Sunday.
But there are some exceptions, among them Julie Brougham, who at 62 is the oldest competitor in Rio. When she competes in dressage, she’ll become the oldest Olympian in New Zealand history.
“It’s quite amazing,” Brougham said. “I’ve created a record and I haven’t done anything.”
Asked why she didn’t make the Olympics earlier, given she’s been riding since she was seven, she blamed her horse — several of them, actually.
“Unfortunately, in New Zealand most of us don’t have a million euros to go and buy a top Grand Prix horse, so we tend to make our own horses,” she said.
Brougham’s teammate, Mark Todd, is just two years younger than her.
“I’m actually riding against children of my contemporaries,” Todd said. “The wonderful thing about the Olympic Games is you just see people of all shapes and sizes and ages.”
Wonderful? Maybe not:
At least one of the younger athletes isn’t so keen to go up against someone old enough to be his father.
Yijun Feng, a 19-year-old table tennis player from the United States, was drawn against 54-year-old Spaniard Zhiwen He for his opening match.
“His style is not energetic, it’s more like ... I want to say disgusting,” Feng said. “I can’t find another word.”
Asked if there’s any advantage to being older, Feng conceded there is.
“They rely on experience, not on endurance like us young players and tend to use more tricks because they’ve played a long time. Like, a long time!”
And, yes, it hurts: Uzbekistan’s
Oksana Chusovitina may seem relatively young at 41, but in her sport — gymnastics — she’s ancient. She’s the first to admit training has gotten tougher as she has aged.
“When I retire from gymnastics, it has to be on a Monday,” she said, “because that is the hardest day of training.”