|
We had the luxury of sleeping in to about 8 AM before attending the annual meeting of the International Society of Olympic Historians here at Beijing Sport University. After lunch, our plan was to drive out to the great wall to see the men's cycling road race. Having attended Olympic road races in 1984 and 2004, plus several world championships, Tour de France, and Giro d'Italia stages, I was confident that we would be able to walk around the course. Indeed the "official spectator guide," which took some effort to find online said that spectators would be allowed to watch from the road. Susan was with me to walk the entire course and see Italian Paolo Bettini take the gold in Athens, but she was skeptical that we would get access to the race here in China.
She made a few calls and arranged for a taxi with a driver from the area to take us there along back roads. It worked for a while, as we drove past fruit orchards and temples, but eventually we ended up at a road block that we couldn't get through. We wound our way through some really small back roads and managed to pop out onto the course briefly, but we were going the wrong way and ended up back at the road block. Susan started talking with the guards and eventually we piled into another taxi that had an Olympic pass. He acted a bit weird about it, as if the pass was borrowed or maybe stolen, but he did get us up to the venue.
It was a beautiful site-right along the Great Wall among gorgeous pointy hills-I spotted an ancient stairway going over the course up toward the start/finish, so we headed for that, but only people with Olympic credentials could get through It turned out that the only place for non-credentialed spectators was a 20 foot long strip of sidewalk behind an Armco barrier on an inside curve about 2k from the finish. A couple of Italians there told me that they had arrived at 10 AM (an hour before the race started in the center of Beijing), but they hadn't been allowed to move anywhere beyond this strip of sidewalk. The little group of about 20 spectators included an Aussie with a kangaroo hat, assorted Irish, a few Dutch with a giant flag, plus various Chinese security guards and volunteers. Such a small crowd for such a big race.
The racers came around about every 20 minutes. In between, one of the Italians got race updates on his PDA from the website of an Italian sport newspaper, and then I translated them into English. When the riders did come by, they were close enough to touch, and besides the main pack, there were little groups of stragglers from places like Korea, Tunisia, and Hong Kong, worth cheering on in the Olympic Spirit.
I even experienced a bit of cosmic yin-yang balance. One Chinese volunteer was fascinated by the pins I had on my lanyard. She pointed to one and I took it off, asking if she had one to trade, but she didn't understand so I just gave her the pin. Then, at the end of the race, a Slovenian rider called me over and offered a team pin-I asked which pin he wanted in trade and he said, none. "I just want to give this to you," he said.
Getting back out of the venue was only slightly less complicated than getting in. Susan was on her cell-phone trying to locate our driver, when I wandered up the road and recognized him standing about 20 yards away. I yelled back at her and finally, he recognized me. As it turns out, one of the road guards was a childhood friend and let him into the restricted area to pick us up.
As we sped back to town, Susan finagled an invitation for me to join her at a dinner with some other scholars and a member of the IOC staff. It was a pleasant conversation, but he was very interested to hear the story of our day. As a philosopher, I wondered aloud whether this was the future of the Olympic Games and sport in general: made for TV events without spectators. I can't imagine a Tour de France mountain stage like that. Cycling has always been a sport for active spectators-you cycle or hike around the course. Today I might have seen the race itself better on TV, but I wouldn't have met the Italians, or traded my pins, or seen the look of disappointment on Paolo Bettini's face when he came to the bottom of the last descent and knew the gold medal was gone.
|
