The last of the Olympics

The Olympics are finally over, Beijing can breathe a big sigh of relief, and the television stations can go back to showing… highlights and reruns of the Olympics. It never ends! Well, there is somewhat of a break from the Olympics and most things are back to normal, but it’s really more of an gradual moderation of Olympic mania during the interlude between the closing ceremony and the kickoff of the Paralympics next month. In a way, I’m glad to get out of here soon, before the traffic and air quality reverts (deteriorates) back to the norm (the rule banning half the city’s cars – about two million – from driving every day will be lifted in a month).

The third and final weekend of the Olympics was another eventful several days. I tutored a few more times after my Chinese class ended, and started on some of the things that I had not gotten around to doing yet. I also saw three events over the final three days of the Games.

I was offered a ticket to some water polo games Friday night but it conflicted with the mountain bike event that I planned to go see on Friday afternoon. On Thursday there was a heavy rainstorm and I learned that the mountain bike race was rescheduled for Saturday morning so I got to go see water polo after all, another sport that I had never seen before in person. My roommate’s friend had two extra tickets, and we showed up at the pool together to meet him, while both of had no idea who was playing. It turned out to be the men’s semifinals, with the USA team playing for the chance to go the gold medal game.

The guy who gave use the tickets was a former college water polo player, and he upgraded our seats as soon as we got into the venue, so we were seated in the section of family and friend’s of the American team. I saw the end of a game between Germany and Greece, who were playing to advance to the 7th and 8th place game, and then I watched Hungary defeat Montenegro in a very close game. Hungary is the best team in the world and have won more gold medals than any other country in the sport so they were surprised to find themselves behind early in the game. It was a really close game and the players got pretty physical and rough with each other. In the end, Hungary won 11-9.

The last match of the night was the USA versus Serbia. The American team was ranked 7th coming into the Olympics and had a great tournament, winning all but one game. The Americans were up by just one point at halftime, but built a solid lead in the second half and came away with a 10-5 win. It was a blast cheering them on with dozens of other Americans and watching the players and their families and girlfriends celebrate after their huge win.

On Sunday morning, their successful run ended and the US lost to Hungary 14-10 in the gold medal game. Hungary won their ninth gold medal, while Serbia beat Montenegro (they used to be a single country until two years ago) to win the bronze medal.
On Saturday morning, I took the subway to the southwest side of the city, were the BMX track, mountain bike course, and velodrome were all built for the Olympics. I got a ticket for the women’s final cross country race from a Chinese friend for face value, which was only ¥30 (about $4.5 USD). There were several preliminary races to decide the mass start in the final race. About 30 riders raced six laps, which took nearly two hours, and the medals went to riders from Germany, Poland, and Russia.

Spectators were able to hike around the hilly and densely forested course to see the riders from almost anywhere along the course. It was a normal looking new-growth forest and often times you would find yourself deep in the trees and unable to see any sign of the city around the park. I haven’t been in that kind of setting in a really long time. It was, however, highly wired, as there were TV camera towers in some places, cameramen seated next to the course in other places, cables crisscrossing the ground, and even some cameras zipping back and forth on wires above the trees and others secured to tree branches, turning and zooming so they must have been remotely control by someone in a media room somewhere.

The riders quickly thinned out after the first lap and I was able to watch them go by in five different places, including some steep climbs and descents. Some riders were going extremely fast downhill and others seemed to struggle in the heat and were trudging along with great difficulty. After the leaders went by for the fifth time, the two guys I came with grabbed me to go find the finish line. It was pretty crowded there yet I was able to get a good spot right in front of the finish line and watch the first dozen or so riders finish, including the three medal winners who raised their bikes over their heads to celebrate.

The medal ceremony followed and I had a good view of that as well. We were kicked out before the men’s final race later in the day so we walked around the area and saw the other two venues, for the BMX and track cycling competitions, from the outside, stopped at a Trek store, which was a pleasant surprise to find, and ate at a restaurant in a huge housing development for the Capital Steel factory workers (it was an entire neighborhood built by the enormous Capital Steel company, and even the metro line was initially a private line for the company and it’s workers decades ago.)

On Sunday morning I headed out the door at 6 a.m. to go downtown. I parked my bike outside of a metro station on the northwest side of the city and had a detailed plan to race around the city and catch the marathon race at four different spots. I wasn’t sure if the timing would work, or if I would get lost or find myself stuck on the wrong side of a closed road, which is what held me up during the women’s marathon, but in the end, everything went smoothly.

Seeing Beijing early in the morning was nice, and the excitement around the race got me going at that early hour. It was fairly cool and the sky was clear and spotless; the air quality was excellent after the heavy rain on Thursday. I went to a metro station at the south end of Tiananmen Square, only to find that the entire square and the streets around it were closed so I couldn’t get very close to the start, which was near the northeast corner of the square. The route runs a couple of blocks east of the square, then turns south and goes through a big park before looping back to Tiananmen and then goes to the northwest, passing through the area where I live. Just before the race got underway at 7:30 I had to readjust my plan and I jogged east until I ran into a closed street and happened to get there just before the race arrived. I saw the runners go by in one big pack and several smaller chasing groups at the two kilometer mark, six minutes into the race.

I ran back to the south end of Tiananmen, where the first runners went by the ten kilometer point in just under 30 minutes (6.2 miles in 30 minutes!). Half a dozen African runners and one Spanish guy were in the first group and smaller groups, which included the three American runners, followed soon after them.

I hopped on the subway and went northwest, where the subway line goes above ground and I could see the subway train overtaking the helicopters that follow the runners. I jumped on my bike and went to a street in between my apartment and Tsinghua University, this time staying on the east side of the road, where I could quickly head to the stadium and see the race just before it enters the Bird’s Nest. Just three runners were out in front this time, about ¾ of the way into the race, looking strong and still running at a blistering pace. The morning air had warmed up considerably under the glaring sun. Samuel Wansiru of Kenya would soon push the pace even further and break away for good. I stuck around to watch a few more runners and they all looked pretty beat.

I grabbed my bike and quickly pedaled east towards the stadium, trying to beat the helicopters as they looped south to follow the leaders on their last 10-12 kilometers. When I reached the wide boulevard south of the Bird’s Nest, I settled in for one last glimpse of the runners. Just south of the stadium – I would guess one mile – Samuel Wansiru came by at just under two hours. Everyone roared but he seemed to pay no attention to us and kept running hard towards the stadium. He would finish in 2 hours 6 minutes and 32 seconds to set an Olympic record. I saw him briefly at four different points, for maybe one minute total, but I can say I saw a record being broken. It was an impressive performance, the whole race was fun to watch, and witnessing the best runners in their world running their hardest was incredible. It was definitely cool to experience some of the race in person.

There were a couple more great performances left to watch in the Olympics, including the USA men’s basketball team getting back to winning gold in a close game against Spain, and the USA men’s volleyball team winning an exciting gold medal game against Brazil. The closing ceremony was pretty good, too, and now it’s nice to came back down to earth after two exhilarating weeks.

Pictures are available here:
Water polo
Mountain biking
Men’s marathon