Olympic events

I bought two tickets to a beach volleyball event off the Internet a while ago with some help from a Chinese friend. The event was Saturday night and was the first time I've attended a sporting event in China. The venue is a temporary stadium that was put up in a parking lot in Beijing’s largest park. Although there’s no real beach in Beijing, the setting of the beach volleyball arena was pretty nice.

You can see my pictures here.

I went with an American student I met through Chinese classes and initially we couldn’t believe we were at an Olympic event. We sat in the 11th row and later moved down the 6th row while watching a total of five matches. There was a sixth, but five hours of volleyball was enough. An American pair played in the first match, beating a team from the Netherlands. It was the first of three women’s matches, followed by matches between Germany and Cuba and then Brazil and Georgia. The two Georgian players are originally from Brazil and later this week they played a team from Russia.

The first men’s match was an American team versus a Latvian team. The two Americans were ranked second in the world and were a seemingly perfect pair – a shorter guy with years of experience and outstanding defensive skills, and a younger guy who is 6’9” and was a dominating blocker and attacker. The two Latvian guys were young, both 23 years old, and were very similar players, both with good all-around skills. The Americans started off strong but showed lackluster play through much of the match while the Latvians were always tenacious and energetic. It was a thrilling match and the Latvians were able to pull off an upset. We were more happy to see a thrilling game and see such spirited play from the Latvian team that we didn’t care that the Americans lost. In the next game a Swiss pair beat two experienced players from Argentina, including one who is the only player to compete in beach volleyball at all four Olympic Games that have included the sport.

On Tuesday afternoon I went to the subway station near the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest with my roommate and a Chinese friend. This spot has become the unofficial gathering point for ticket scalpers and we wanted to see what was available. There were really expensive tickets for popular events like basketball, soccer, and diving. It was impossible to find tickets to one widely popular sport – ping-pong. Tickets to final events were going for a lot of money – over $100 USD for a fencing final later that night and over $1000 for the 100 meter final in men's track.

We had no luck getting reasonably priced tickets from the serious scalpers until two Europeans approached us and said they couldn’t go to an event later that night and had to get rid of a pair tickets to two handball matches. Handball happened to be one of the sports we were most interested in seeing. I met an American guy who was attending his fourth Olympics and he said handball was his favorite sport, so it was near the top of my list. We offered ¥100 for each (about $14) and snapped them up as quickly as possible. They were pleased to sell the tickets to us because we were excited for the chance to see handball and told them we wouldn’t resell them.

Not long after, a Danish guy and then a German woman who were looking to buy handball tickets to watch their home countries play offered us several times the price we paid for them, but we turned them down. We still needed a third ticket and almost bought one from another Dane who offered us one for ¥400 but we decided to try our luck closer to the handball venue. On our way there we found a Chinese guy who had two tickets and was asking ¥300 for each; we got him to sell us one for ¥200. Our Chinese friend had low hopes of attending an event because prices were outrageous for so many events. She balked at the handball tickets because ¥100 means a lot more to her than it does to me, but my roommate and I didn’t want her to go home alone and miss out so we bought the third ticket for her. It was well worth it because she was ecstatic and came close to tears.

Handball turned out to be even better than we expected (pictures here). We saw two back-and-forth games full of action and high-flying goals. It was a really small arena packed with fans from the four countries playing that night. We knew nothing about handball and it was the first time any of us ever watched a full game. In the first game Denmark played South Korea. Denmark is one of the gold-medal favorites so we assumed they’d win.

The two teams had very different playing styles. The Danes were big and had some extremely powerful shooters and passed a lot. The Koreans were smaller and didn’t pass nearly as much, but they were faster and pulled off some highly coordinated attacks. They made a few tricky goals by leaping at the goalie and drawing him out with a fake throw only to softly float the ball over his head. They also scored the best goal of the night. It was like an alley-oop – one player passed the ball from one side of the goal arc to the far side (except for the goalie, no player from both teams can enter the goal arc until the ball first enters that area) with a hard bounce pass. A teammate on the opposite side anticipated the pass and leapt into the arc, caught the ball as it bounced up and turned and threw it in the goal before his feet touched the ground. Denmark was up more often than not, though never by more than three points. It was extremely close throughout the second half and Korea scored a goal in the last ten seconds to win 31-30.

Germany and Iceland played in the second match and we all thought that Germany looked like the better team. It was close in the first half but the Germans fell apart and they couldn’t stop a couple Icelanders who had flawless games and seemed to score at ease. We were surprised once again as the Iceland team won the second game.

It was a really cool atmosphere; the arena was very intimate – no more than 6,000 seats – and loud because of the rabid fans from each of the four countries. A few members of the Chinese men’s handball team sat a few rows ahead of us during the first game and a dozen or so Danish and Korean players sat in front of us to watch the second game. Some Danish fans near us knew a bunch of the players personally. And the games were non-stop action and fun to watch. There was lots of passing like in soccer, lots of scoring like in basketball (though only by single points), and it was very physical. The rules seemed to allow for a lot more contact than basketball does, but when a foul was called (using yellow or red cards), a player was given a 7 meter penalty shot. Those were cool to watch because the player would stand on a line and do several fake throws to get the goalie to jump before falling forward and whipping the ball towards the goal. I don’t think the U.S. has a team and it’s unfortunate that the sport is not more popular in the States because I wish I had more chances to watch and play the sport.

Like everyone else, I have watched a number of past Olympics on television, however, I’ve never given much thought to what it is like to see one in person and I never thought I’d have the chance to do just that so soon. It has turned out to be much cooler than I expected. There are so many visitors from around the world, which is a novelty after living here for almost a year and having very limited contact with foreigners. It makes me appreciate the multiethnic qualities of large American cities because it’s not usually that way here and all Chinese all the time gets old (I'd say the same for small town America). By the way, demographers project that the U.S. will no longer have a majority ethnic group in about 35 years.

There is a lot going on, from country-specific events sponsored by the embassies and various other groups, big corporate events like the Coca-Cola one where I saw the opening ceremony, and all the media (I’ve never seen more cameras before), and athletes (I've seen buses full of athletes and cyclists riding the streets around the Olympic village). And you get to attend events and watch sports that you’d never think of watching in person, not to mention see those sports played at the highest level by the world’s best athletes. Over 16 extraordinary days you are in the middle of history in the making (if only I could go to a swimming or track event and witness a world record-breaking performance), and the whole time people around the world are watching intently.

If you have any interest, make plans for London 2012 soon!