Da Silva deserved much better than the loneliest home medal ever
RIO DE JANEIRO: Thiago Braz Da Silva gave Rio and the rest of Brazil their “Wayde Moment”, late on Monday night, as he won the men’s pole vault.
Da Silva, who wasn’t even expected on the podium, also threw a new Olympic record to complete the fairytale.
He flashed a smile that covered every major newspaper in Brazil yesterday morning.
He sambaed around the Olympic Stadium, not quite believing what he had just done, and the crowd went delirious.
Only, it was just half a crowd. And most of those in the stadium were foreigners. Americans, Argentinians and Europeans who had made it their mission to stay on and watch.
Still, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. The biggest turnout at the athletics stronghold was, unsurprisingly, on the night of Usain Bolt’s third 100m gold medal, and that small matter of Wayde van Niekerk’s 400m dash into the history books and a bright future.
“Super Sunday” aside, the Olympic Stadium has lacked the crackle that ought to accompany the extraordinary stories playing out in front of us.
It is not as if the man on the street doesn’t want to be part of this IOC circus that revolves around the world.
They simply cannot afford it. A lawyer, who had been granted tickets to the handball, rejigged her schedule at work, because she couldn’t afford to miss out on going.
“Brazil is obsessed with sport. Anything. We will watch anything, but it is too expensive,” Candice Buckley bemoaned.
It is a shattering truth, but Rio’s citizens are not invited to their own party.
Tickets start at about R1000 for some minor events, and that is for a single session.
For a seat at “Super Sunday”, the bill started at R2500, and then escalated dramatically.
In a city in the midst of an economic crisis, the prices are ‘loco’.
Consequently, Rio has looked good from afar, but it has lacked the soul of a city in love with the world’s greatest sporting event.
Rio has been buzzing on weekends, but weekdays have lacked for atmosphere, smacked of silence and, surely, regret from the suits in charge.
It is a spectacle that is made by the spectators, the roars that announce the latest record being smashed.
Rio hasn’t truly roared, and that is regrettable. It did rumble at the swimming, surely for Bolt, and their foot- ball side, but precious little else in the big venues.
It has mostly murmured, as a city has watched on as an event has invaded their roads and beds for a month.
So, on Monday night, when Thiago Braz Da Silva should have been unable to hear himself scream, he heard his family’s squeals bounce off the empty seats.
It was a shame, because it deserved infinitely more. They stopped briefly in bars, had a quick chorus of “Brazil, Brazil”, then went back to their caipirinhas and their lives.
It may well be the loneliest home medal in the history of the Olympic Games.
That’s not right.