Inside the athletes’ village,
RIO DE JANEIRO— They’ve already won the genetic lottery, each and every Olympian.
In the full flush of youth and young adulthood, most of them might never look this good again. Taut bodies, rippling muscles, skin that glows, not a Botox-petrified face in sight.
Mankind, womankind, at its godlike best. Or freaks, perhaps. The six-foot-six lady high jumper, the runt-sized male gymnast with the cauliflower ears and pimply face. In the outside world, they’d be oddities, almost alien, certainly stareinducing. But here, inside the athletes’ village, she doesn’t slouch to minimize her height and he won’t be bullied for specializing in an effete sport where men where ballet-like slippers whilst hanging from rings.
Queuing for McDonald’s at the moment — longest lineup in the village — and damn the nutritionists provided for healthy-living advice. So much for the body being a temple. These temples are 5,000-calorie-a-day eating machines, with a sprawling 24/7 dining hall the size of two football fields serving up 30,000 meals a day, the cuisine Chinese, Italian, Jamaican, Mexican, Brazilian, and . . . Vegemite. And still the Aussies brought their own barista.
Kind of like high school, actually, where the person who arrives alone, tray in hands, looks around anxiously for a place to sit. Hmm, those Tongans look friendly. What’s your sport? Fencing. Oh. That’s nice.
This, for a fortnight, is their normal, the 10,000-plus athletes bunking at the Rio-within-Rio hamlet, a satellite colony of blessed humanity — the .000001percenters around whom the Lollapalooza of the Olympics revolves.
Their orbit, most especially behind the chainlink fencing and bristling security that allows them splendid isolation, albeit it in spartan quarters, jammed higgledypiggledy into the 17,950-bunk complex — 31 new 17-storey residential towers, 3,604 apartment units already sold off as post-Olympic condos. Canada occupies 14 floors in their apartment hub, with flags flung over the railings top to bottom and a red-and-white-bedecked moose out front.
From the obscure air-pistol shooter to the glitterati of sport, all allegedly equals behind the wire. Except not really, of course. Usain Bolt. Just about every village resident, it seems, wants to have a selfie photograph taken with the sprint king, barrelling down on a triple-gold repeat in Rio — 100 metre, 200 metre, 4x100 relay. Team Hong Kong was delighted to find themselves in the same tower as the Jamaicans, with easiest access to Bolt. He’s been eminently gracious, if not necessarily thrilled about the advent of selfie bombing. “Since they came in with the selfies, it’s the worst thing,” Bolt said in a recent GQ interview. “You hardly ever get asked for autographs anymore. It’s always selfies.”
Michael Phelps is also among the superstar-selfie gets. But at least the multi-decorated swimmer is here, among the mere mortals. Unlike the NBA-dominated U.S. basketball and their female counterparts, who’ve made their Games lodgings a luxurious, nine-deck, 157-metre cruise ship, the Silver Cloud. Anchored in the bay, the ship features a casino, pool and, perhaps most crucially, beds big enough to accommodate the athletes’ dimensions.
Though Canadian tennis player Vasek Pospisil, six-foot-four, has no leg-room issue when he stretched out in his bunk. “Yeah, not too bad. I’m not too picky.”
Few athletes are. Some delegations — the Australians, for instance — were absolutely appalled by their units upon arrival and refused to move in until the problems were fixed. Those issues, as has been well documented, run to exposed electrical wiring, plumbing that doesn’t work and heaps of construction garbage left behind. (Many athletes were also confused by the don’tflush-toilet-paper directive posted in bathrooms, wondering how exactly to transfer their human waste to the pink bags provided and where the package went from there.)
“Honestly, I’m very happy with it,” continued Pospisil. “We have a really nice building, no problems. The AC is working. That was the main thing for me. Maybe some of the other countries have issues, but not Canada.”
Or perhaps Canadian athletes aren’t complainers. (Unlike Canadian reporters.)
Asked about the availability of hot water, another common complaint ’round the village quarters, Canadian rugby sevens player Kayla Moleschi said: “It’s in and out, but we’re used to having those cold showers to perk our energy up and get the muscles kind of relaxing
“There will be things that will be out of our control but I think it’s how you deal with it and we’re a really positive bunch. We try to see the bright side of things rather than the dim.”
More serious issues have risen in recent days, however. Theft, primarily. While street crime is notorious in Rio, with robberies soaring 81per cent in the last year, one might have thought the athletes were safe inside their highly secured bubble. Yet the Danish team reported they wuz robbed while out of the room, with clothing, mobile phones, iPads and computers among the pilfered items.
Sounds like an inside job. Officials have apologized. Danes are no longer allowing cleaners into their rooms.
The British also somehow found themselves separated, for good, from nine bags of swimming equipment left in their quarters.
The only violence of significance that has been confirmed at the village was a Moroccan boxer arrested Friday on suspicion of attempted sexual assault against two chambermaids. He can be held in jail for at least 15 days, as police investigate the allegation.
It was all brightness and smiles — and flip-flops and shorts — at the village on Sunday, though, athletes lolling around on the Astroturf grass, sitting on benches around the asphalt piazza, lounging on beach chairs surrounding the sand pitch where beach volleyball is played for recreation — at least until a sudden howling wind came out of nowhere creating a sandstorm the likes of which I haven’t experienced since Afghanistan, and I think I saw a gymnast munchkin disappear into a funnel. And still the McDonald’s lineup didn’t shrink.
The life of Riley, they lap up at the village, at least for this fortnight. Freebies galore: clothing, pop, movie passes, chocolate bars, Beats by Dre headphones included in the goodie bag. In the international village part of the complex there’s a bank, a florist, a beauty salon to get your glam on, a general store, Olympics souvenir store, Samsung tech gewgaw store, with a double line of computers for surfing — most popular drop-in joint — and giantscreen broadcasting competition.
Across the portal into the residential area where only athletes and coaches can cross, who knows what’s going on?
But a record-high 450,000 free condoms have been made available. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.