Morning coffee & tight T-shirts at the Olympics
With a little more than a month until the beginning of the Rio Olympic Games, we asked our veteran columnists — who have covered at least 15 Olympics each — to share their favourite Summer Olympic memories. With Canada Day around the corner, we went heavy on Canadiana. Today, we hear from Christie Blatchford:
1. LISTEN TO ADAM
Any and all conversations with the cerebral kayaker Adam van Koeverden, for whom Rio will be his fourth Summer Games. Whether he was winning gold in Athens or silver in London or working on a bus (in Sochi, where he toiled as a commentator), AVK always had something to say. Or he doesn’t say anything. Imagine that.
2. OH, THE GOOD OLD DAYS
The press bar at t he Barcelona Olympics. The Games now are so big that there often isn’t a media village — too many reporters, too expensive, etc. — with the result that reporters are spread over hither and yon, hotels and apartments. But in Barcelona in 1992, there was a village and what a village it was. At its centre was this spread-out, open-air bar, usually with a band playing or music of some sort; you actually had to pass it to get to your room, and there were few who could regularly manage the feat, let alone once. As the Games drew to a close, most of the Canadian contingent were there until the wee hours, on the last night until the sun came up and we had to fly home. It was fun, it was collegial and there was even a fountain to play in and cool off.
3. BEWARE OF LOCKED DOORS
The Montreal Olympics in 1976 were the first Summer Games I covered and I was a nervous wreck and largely incompetent. ( I am at ease now with my level of incompetence.) I was working then for The Globe and Mail, and I confess, the one day where someone was marginally more inept than I was gave me some secret comfort — t he day t hat deputy sports editor Jim Shuttleworth, a lovely guy, managed to lock himself in- to the bathroom of his room at the old Windsor Hotel, where Team Globe was staying. He missed the morning meeting he’d called.
4. RUSHING TO JUDGMENT
In Atlanta, everyone remembers the pipe bomb that went off, killing one person and injuring scores of others. But what stuck with me more than that was the pursuit of Richard Jewell, the security guard who had found it and was wrongly and publicly identified as the suspect.
This was 1996, remember, before the full advent of social media as l ynch mob, and what happened to Jewell was a preview of all that. I remember going to his house one day, finding it surrounded by cameras and satellite trucks, and one of his relatives trying to say he was innocent. Well, he was. Years later, a man named Eric Robert Rudolph pleaded guilty to that bombing and others, at an abortion clinic and a lesbian nightclub.
5. WHICH WAY IS HOME
In Sydney in 2000, there was the sheer beauty of the city and the setting and the weird little zoo with all the wacky Australian animals at the entrance to the media village. But that village was huge and all the buildings looked the same, and with my appalling sense of direction, I don’t think I ever found my way home in less than an hour — and since this was invariably late at night, in the dark, after a long day with another one just hours away, it was killing me. Don’t hate me because I’m stupid.
6. FINDING THE PERFECT CAFÉ
I loved the little café in Russell Square in London. At the square was a transport hub, where all the press buses gathered, and was just a few minutes’ walk from where we were staying. I ran around the park a few times but it’s so small I felt silly, so settled instead for having a quiet latte there in the early morn.
7. HELP, I NEED A T- SHIRT!
My luggage was lost on the way to Athens, and as we got to Team Globe apartment in a sweaty heap, I asked the only other woman on the team if I could borrow a T- shirt until my bags arrived. She took a long measuring look at me, sniffed and said, “But I wear an extra small!” We’ve since become friends, but that day, I could have strangled her. One of the boys loaned me a shirt.
8. LESSON LEARNED
One day, in Atlanta, I saw a truly great reporter, if not always a beloved one, in action. This was a woman with a fearsome reputation for being able to ask anyone anything. We were at a Paralympic race — it was run during these Olympics, as a showcase event — and we were waiting in the bowels of the stadium for the athl etes t o come wheeling down to us.
My colleague squealed, in easy earshot of the athletes, “Wow! Look at how little their legs are!” I nearly passed out in horror, but the athletes carried on, presumably because they were already well aware that their legs were shrunk and that this sometimes came as a surprise to the doltish ablebodied who hadn’t given it a thought.
9. CHINA GOOD, COFFEE BAD
In the Beijing suburb where we stayed, I loved the older people I saw in the early mornings, out walking their usually small dogs. I also loved the food, the Bird’s Nest stadium, and just about everything else about China. But it was a monumentally bad coffee country.
10. THE BEST BUS RIDES, EVER . . .
Greece had the best coffee, with Australia and the lovely flat white a close second. Thus fortified, in all the Olympic cities, the best thing is always the long bus ride to the venues, around every corner something new to see, moments that make you ache with the pleasure of being there.