Open hearts, and the tears flow
Memory is a tricky thing at an Olympics. My favourite question to anyone here is: What did you do two days ago? Their faces go blank. Time moves differently, here. It’s a lifetime, every day.
But here, it’s not a favourite moment: it’s a moment that hurt. It was Marlinde Bloemen, the wife of longtrack genius Ted-Jan Bloemen, in the moments after he won gold in the 10,000 metres, the greatest race in the sport, over the greatest racer in the sport. And she was weeping, and I asked why, and she told me the heartbreaking story that one of her oldest friends, who had tried to have children for four years, had lost her baby girl.
And I stood there, honoured by the trust she was putting in me, and I couldn’t speak. I had to gulp back air to keep from weeping, too. Because my wife and I tried to have children for 21⁄ years, and it was really hard. 2 We eventually had twins, then a third and a fourth, but those years were devastating and confusing and painful, and they all came back to me in a rush as this big-hearted young lady told me about her old friend, and she cried.
I told her what my wife and I had dealt with: I told her how hard it is, and how much I felt for her friend. And it’s not a favourite moment. The favourite moment might be some moment where the thrill of chasing the next Olympic story, of swinging from vine to vine, set my heart racing. Or talking with figure skater Eric Radford, a wonderful soul, about how he writes music, and how I write. Or the intense camaraderie between journalists here, on the rare nights you get to go out for dinner.
But it was that moment that I will remember most because I felt so connected to someone I had met once before, and we stood there in an empty arena and cried at the same time, because we felt empathy for someone. The Olympics brings people from all over the world together, and the result can be really beautiful. And in that moment, talking with a young woman whose heart was right there in the open for everyone to see, I felt lucky to be here.