Wednesday morning, July 31

This morning we went for what I had looked forward to the most, BMX bicycle.  It is bicycles performing tricks like skateboarders.  However, it was probably our biggest fail of the Olympics, showing how hard it is to predict what will work out and what won’t!  BMX was located in the “urban park”, which is a transformed Place de la Concorde where they built 4 separate small stadiums and a bunch of common space.  This area was built to showcase urban sports – skateboarding, break dancing, BMX, three-person basketball, etc.  You enter the bigger space then go to your individual stadium.  In the common space there are also some demonstrations, food booths, and water misters to cool you off.

 The problem was that although I thought we had bought tickets for the BMX event, we actually had “general admissions” tickets which did not entitle us to a seat in the arena with the competition.  Instead, we were directed to a second arena.  Although it also had the skateboard ramps, there was no live action, only a video on a big screen (and not even that big) showing the live event happening in the next stadium.  It took us quite a bit of time to figure this out, and then to find Alain, who was holding seats for us.  So there we were, in an arena looking at a screen, in the blazing heat (well over 90 degrees), with no shade and no breeze, metal stands and a concrete, empty skateboard platform.  Needless to say, Len and I lasted approximately five minutes before we abandoned this activity! 

the unused BMX bowl showing videos of BMX events elsewhere

We then walked over to the area where breakdancing was going to be performed.  At least there we found some seating in the shade.  We learned that there would be a DJ demonstration shortly so we hung around to watch that.  It was a bit more comfortable, given the shade, although still somewhat stifling.  They also had a graffiti artist at work, in keeping with the urban theme.  We had our picnic lunch (having learned to bring sandwiches with us) and watched the DJ for about a half hour before returning to our apartment.  Apparently he was a famous DJ.  There were no dancers yet, but a few spectators jumped up to do some moves, which was encouraged by the space – it was meant to be your opportunity to participate in activities.  

Just this much activity left us exhausted and drenched with sweat, eager to get back to our AC and a second shower of the day.  I suppose if it hadn’t been so hot, we might have enjoyed watching the BMX on the video – you could hear the cheering from the stadium next door – but under the circumstances, in our view it was totally unpleasant.

Tuesday evening, July 30

 at the Women's Team Artistic Gymnastics...

 

Guy asked: "Are we in France or America?"

watching four sports at once: vaulting, balance beam, floor exercises, uneven parallel bars

can you spot the woman on the balance beam?

spotlights on the crowd create a moving pattern

Simon Biles is the superstar

It was definitely a thrill to see the USA women gymnastics team win the gold medal.  Wow, what a show!  It was the only time that we saw people outside the venue with signs up trying to buy tickets.  I doubt they were successful – it was the most popular show in town.  It seemed like the audience was 75% American.  Flags and American-themed outfits dominated.  We had neglected to bring USA logowear ourselves, so we borrowed a flag for a photo!  The arena at Bercy was very nice – I think the best venue we’ve been in.  Comfortable seats, good sight lines, easy in and out. 

The arena is set up so that all four skills are performed at once:  balance beam, vault, parallel bars and floor.  This is a bit confusing to watch as all 4 locations were operating on their own schedule.  Some are starting while others are finishing.  Then they wait until the score is posted, which can take some time, before they let the next person proceed, which is entirely different for each of the four sections.  Vault took less time than the others, so that group always finished first.  Two teams are assigned to each skill, with team members alternating.  Then, when everybody is finished, they have the “rotation” where the teams formally march to the next skill area. So there are four sets of competition.

They show the score for each person once it is posted, but they don’t keep it there long, so we often missed it because we were watching something else happening.  This made it tough to follow along with the results in the arena – those of you watching at home on TV probably had a much better sense of it.  They did show the team score regularly, so we knew that US was in the lead from the beginning.  But the shifting fortunes of the other teams were a bit harder to track. 

Our seats were nearest to the parallel bars so we had a great view of that competition.  We also could see floor exercise very well, but the other two were more distant.  That said, we had brought some small binoculars so enjoyed seeing the other skills through those, and they showed replays on the big screens. 

It was interesting that the various teams were so differently built.  The Japanese were tiny gals, whereas the Americans were much more muscular – the Chinese were in between.  I think that this sport used to be for the small, pre-pubescent girls who could fly through the air but it has evolved to being much more athletic.  All the teams that won were larger and more muscular.  It takes real muscle and strength to do this sport.  Simone Biles, the “greatest of all time”, is very short, but she is sturdy.  It was fun watching her – she smiled quite a bit.  Everywhere she went, there were five or six cameras pointed at her.  When they say someone is in the spotlight, that doesn’t begin to describe what it is like for these gals.  There seemed to be one camera person per athlete given all the media from all the different countries.  We saw media everywhere – in the stands interviewing random people, outside interesting random people, on the floor videoing everybody’s every move.

Canadians and Japanese -- notice the size difference

 
We’ve found that in each event we spend a bit of time “decoding” what is happening.  Where are the judges?  Where are the referees?  Who are those people over there?  How is it scored?  Why did X just happen? How many people advance to the next level?  Do they get multiple tries, and do they average those scores or take the best?  When we figure something out, we feel very pleased with ourselves.  For example, Guy pointed out to me that the judges in gymnastics sat with white screens between them so as to prevent them from being influenced by the judge next to them.  We could spot the 4 different set of judges.  In badminton the other day, we watched the many line referees who sat in a quite specific way with their very specific hand signals to indicate “in” vs. “out” and other faults.  I’ve also noticed how choreographed the whole event is.  Nobody walks anywhere randomly.  People arrive in a specific order, walk at a specific pace, wave and turn simultaneously, and so on.  There is very little that is spontaneous.  I think that’s why the press makes such a big deal out of any spontaneous display of enthusiasm from an athlete.

 It was fun to watch the award ceremony.  First they had to build the podium in front of our eyes – that took a bunch of people.  Then the ceremony itself.  Unfortunately, we were facing the backs of the athletes, but they did turn around a few times to acknowledge the arena.  It seemed like nobody left until after the ceremony. 

All in all, one of the highlights of our Olympics!

Tuesday morning, July 30

This morning we headed back to the place where we saw the kayak races, this time for rowing on “calm waters”.  Unfortunately, the weather has turned super hot – over 90 degrees.  I thought we would be fine, as the races started early, but even arriving just after 9:30am, it already was pretty bad.  We were sitting in unshaded stands.  We had a great view of the finish line, but the big screen was not well positioned for us to be able to see the rest of the race and for some reason the audio was simply not audible where we were sitting.  Without the screen to give you context and without the audio narration which was really great at explaining things, it mean just sitting there sweltering and watching the occasional exciting finish, while not being sure exactly which boats were from which countries.  We watched a few races of single and double sculls.  Then we decided that the enjoyment to misery ratio was not high enough, so we left after an hour.  As we walked along towards the exit, we could hear the audio and see some other screens, and definitely appreciated the racing more, but were happiest once we got to the air-conditioned train.  

I should note that we are doing a heck of a lot of walking.  Each venue requires a ton of walking just to get to your seat.  This rowing venue required particularly long treks (with only part of it shaded).  For going to and from the venue, we walked 4 miles today!  There is a handicap access somehow, but it’s not very visible, and, surprisingly, one doesn’t see little carts taking people back and forth who would have trouble with the walk.  I cannot imagine an event in the U.S. that would assume people could walk 4 miles in order to participate.  Even people with canes or in surgery boots were just walking along with the rest of us.

Our apartment (AirBnB) is great.  It is in a wonderful neighborhood – lots of grocery options and bakeries.  Good metro access.  It has some little oddities – it is somebody’s home, who they vacated for the games, but on the whole, it is serving us well.  Thankfully there is a portable air conditioning unit that we move from room to room now that it is so hot outside (we didn’t need it until last night).  However, the unit needs to be vented, which means we have to leave a door to the outside open, which seems to let in hot air, too.  Hmmm. 

I had intended to go to the “urban park” this afternoon to see break dancing and skate boarding, but, alas, it is simply too hot to be outside in the afternoon, so we are back at the apartment resting.  Tonight the big excitement is getting to see gymnastics …..

amazing temporary infrastructure everywhere

Monday, July 29

 We have found everyone to be in very good spirits, cooperative, patient and respectful.  We have been in conversation with people from Australia, Great Britain, US, Germany, China. People take photos for each other, let others pass through lines, take turns, etc.  At the swimming, we saw next to a young American, Leo, who swims for Oberlin College.  Leo was an absolute encyclopedia of knowledge about swimming.  This turned out to be very handy for us, since we know pretty much nothing, and Leo seemed to enjoy having the opportunity to educate us.  

Now for a word about food.  France, as you know, has one of the greatest cuisines on earth.  Somehow that did not translate over to the Olympic venues.  We had assumed that we would be able to pick up a decent bite to eat at an event.  But when we went to get dinner at the swimming event the other night, there were exactly two choices:  falafel and nachos.  We selected falafel only to arrive at the front of the line to find them sold out, so nachos all around.  The next day, I got up and went to the local patisserie, picked up a few sandwiches, and we happily had a picnic inside the venue yesterday evening.  This was a particularly good idea given that the only choice there was waffles.  

On to yesterday’s agenda …

We enjoyed having lunch with Guy’s daughter Clara, whom we have known since she was small … but now she is all grown-up, married and expecting a child of her own.  Then we went to badminton.  I must say that this was a surprisingly thrilling sport to watch.  We had great seats, along the center of one of the courts.  There were three courts playing simultaneously, which made it a bit strange as you would hear people cheering for a different game than you were watching, and you wanted to watch all three.   It felt a bit schizophrenic.   We played badminton a lot as kids, and it is basically the same game, only that little shuttle seems to go a heck of a lot faster than I remember!  It is surprising how it starts fast, and then falls, so you can see it is hard to judge whether it will be out of bounds are not.  It’s much more athletic that I had imagined as well – these men and women were very powerful, fast and agile.  I particularly enjoyed the last match we saw of men's doubles – The Danes were ferocious – I predict they ultimately get gold.

Then we transitioned over to the Grand Palais, an enormous exhibition space in Paris that was remade into an athletic venue for fencing.  It is just amazing the amount of construction and adaptation that these games take.  Either the organization of the queues is better or we’re getting more tolerant, because the entry process seems to go quite smoothly now.  

I will have to confess that fencing is my least favorite sport by far.  I found it totally incomprehensible – no sense of who won a point and why.  Had no appreciation for the skill involved.  Len and I left early on this one.

the Danes playing aggressive Badminton

games on three courts at the same time

lunch with Clara

the helpful pink fingers are everywhere

fencing in the Grand Palais

Sunday, July 28

 As promised, I got some photos of the red turd mascot – both as a hat that people were wearing and as a cartoon.  Also, I forgot to mention that the French national symbol is the chicken, so you also see plenty of chicken hats and chicken costumes.  There also are people scattered around who will put the French colors on your cheek with a lipstick-like applicator.  We happily participated, figuring that the US colors are the same, so what the heck?  

Yesterday was more lines and more security.  Both are very impressive.  I actually had to drink from my “flask” yesterday, so felt happy that all those signs were not main in vain.  There is great signage everywhere …. You literally follow pink lines on the floor or pink signs everywhere.  In most places there are dozens, seemingly hundreds, of volunteers with big foam pink fingers pointing you which way to go.  I’ll try to get a photo of one of those for tomorrow.

Yesterday’s first event was kayak.  We had to travel over an hour to get there but it was a new train and very comfortable.  There was a lovely walk through a pretty residential area and then we arrived at the venue.  I will say that even though the lines are huge, they are pretty good about processing you quickly, with lots of entry points.   Our seats were great and this event was super fun to watch.  We watched the women’s semi-final, with 22 contestants vying for 12 spots in the final.  They go down some rapids and through gates, both downstream and upstream.  You could see how it took both enormous strength as well as concentration to get to the right gate positioned the right way.  You lose time for touching a gate and you lose a lot of time for missing a gate.  There are judges besides each set of gates who decide on the spot whether there is a penalty, which can be reviewed later.  We left before the final as Alain wanted to get to see the first match at the swimming.  

A word about Alain – he is a new friend (an old friend of Guy’s) – and he is the expert amongst us on all-things-sport.  He is so dedicated that he carries an iPad with him to watch other competitions while we are at a live competition, and can be spotted watching at just about any moment.

Our second event was swimming.  We went very early, thinking we would have time for a light dinner but, alas, the line stretched for miles, so we got on it more than an hour and a half in advance, and made it into the stadium only ½ hour before the start.  The food on offer was falafel sandwich or nachos.  We all decided on falafel, of which they ran out before we got to the front, so nachos for dinner.

This is an old stadium, and we climbed some very steep steps (without handrails!) to get to the very top, where our seats were.  I swear we bought better category of seats, but there we were, on the roof.  We couldn’t even see the live video screens from where we were.  That said, we could see the pool perfectly well.  The spectators were very animated – loads of singing and cheering.  The place becomes totally silent when the swimmers mount the starting blocks, then erupts once they are in the water.  The first race was the big one, with local hero Leon setting a new Olympic record in the men’s 400 meter medley.  He was quite impressive – way ahead of the others.  The was a good pace of races, both men's and women's, and different strokes, interspersed with medal ceremonies.  We watched the US win several medals and even got to sing the Star Spangled Banner.

We had a heck of a journey getting home with several Metro glitches (some self-imposed, others not) but eventually made it back to our apartment to collapse after a very full day.

Saturday, July 27

 Now that we have completed the Opening Ceremony and our first day of the games, I thought I would write a little bit about the experience.

#1 – lines, lines, lines.  This is connected to #2 – massive security presence.  Everywhere we go, we see police, unarmed security, and armed military style people with fierce looking weapons.  To enter a venue, you have to plan on an hour or more.  First, you may go through identity check – can you produce identification to match the name on your ticket?  Second, you go through security check of all bags.  Today, we even got a pat-down in one venue.  Third, you go through ticket check.  Finally, you are told to prepare to take a sip of your water!  I guess this is to prove it is not gasoline for a bomb.  However, in spite of many signs about getting ready to take a drink from your “flask”, nobody asked us to do so.  

 

dirnk?

I found the Opening Ceremony quite disappointing.  We had great seats, overlooking the Seine.  There was a big video screen across from us, but no matter how big, it was pretty far away (for example, I could not read the country names on the signs on the boats).  The audio was excellent.  But, in the end, the majority of the interesting activity was not in our sight, but was on video.  Since it started to rain pretty badly, I found myself wondering why I was sitting outside watching a video screen at some distance away.  Yes, the boats eventually cruised by us, and we enjoyed waving at the athletes, but after a few hours, and being soaking wet, we decided that was not worth staying for.  I’m sure if it hadn’t been raining, it would have been more enjoyable.  But even if so, I’m afraid that it wouldn’t have given us any better content.  Clearly, if you were based at the finish line, you would have seen some of the super exciting stuff.  I think the idea of the opening ceremony on the Seine was a bold move, but one that ended up serving the remote audience far better than those of us on site (who paid dearly for tickets).

Our first event today was diving.  We saw women’s synchronous springboard diving where two women dive together and try to be absolutely identical.  They start with “easy” dives (relatively speaking), and progress to harder ones, earning more points.  It was beautiful to watch.  Our seats were not great, but it still was fun to be there, and we could see the dives as well as replays on a big screen.  And we watched the U.S. win a silver medal, so that was cool.  The Chinese won gold, and it seemed like half the venue was full of Chinese people.

Our second event was Rugby 7 (7 players on a regular size field).  This event took place in the Stade de France, the giant stadium on the north side of Paris.  It was about as opposite from the diving as could be imagined.  Instead of a small venue full of sweet Chinese gals waving their little Chinese flags, and taking a thousand photos of each other, and instantly going silent as soon as the divers stepped on the boards, we were now surrounded by 80,000 rowdy French rugby fans with face paint, crazy wigs, and assorted props (notably, a fellow near us with a giant, stuffed boar’s head), who were loudly chanting and singing.  The Rugby 7 game itself was a strange mixture of American football, soccer, hockey, wrestling and gladiator.  It actually was super fun to watch.  The games are very short – only 15 minutes – and a lot happens fast.  I’m happy to report that the French won a gold medal, which was a big upset to Fiji, who was expected to win.  Len and I left after the last American game as we wanted to beat the crowd out of the stadium.  I’ll look forward to hearing from Guy and Alain as to how long it took for them to get out.

The city is well organized for the games.  The transportation system is marked throughout for all the venues.  There are several apps to use, such as how to get from one venue to another.  You would think that this would be a boon for all the local businesses, but instead they are complaining because the regular tourists are not here, and the Olympic tourists seem to be otherwise occupied, and not doing their normal touristy things.

Also – I should mention that they have the ugliest mascot for these games.  I haven’t taken a photo yet – will add one before I’m done.  But I think of it as the “red turd”.  Apparently it is supposed to be like the hats worn by the French during the revolution.  The rest of the graphics are pretty nice.

-- Donna

PS:

is this taking equality too far?

Friday, July 26

in the morning the entrance to the
opening ceremony is empty

so many reasons to love Paris...

later it took us a hour and half
to get in

art in the Seine

with our friends Guy and Alain

from our seats:
big screens and excellent sound system

the rain starts

but it doesn't stop the country boats

which are being followed by the video boats

We only stayed until the M's, and got home totally soaked!

Thursday, July 25

 

Took the Eurostar with the team from Great Britain! Athletes have plenty of escorts.

No shortage of souvenirs.

dinner with a friend
at a bistro outside our apartment

just a few roads closed near the Seine