Olympic Impressions from Schinias/Athens. Day 11 - Tuesday 24th August 2004.
This is not intended to be commentary, as that is well covered via TV, radio, the FISA website and the newspapers. Plus it's difficult to get time amongst the other jobs. Here are odd bits and pieces those following the Games may find interesting.
He pulled off 6 release-and-catch moves, with a dazzling series of flips and twists inserted into them: twice the number even the best of the rest ever attempt. Every one came off beautifully, his dismount worked fine, and it looked like a champion's performance. Even the dour hall commentators got pretty excited, and overhearing the Eurosport bunch up behind me in the media section, they had him tagged for gold right away. But the judges marked him down - had him as third (with a lot of competitors yet to go) and at a low score. Malaysia and Canada were particularly cruel. It was like watching Torvill & Dean's last Olympic effort all over again. From the looks of them and from their reactions to subtle clever moves, the audience were mostly either gymnasts themselves or coaches/parents/friends of gymnasts, and knew what they were seeing.
A steady hand-clap, started in two corners simultaneously, rapidly developed into a prolonged boo, which was taken up all around the hall. I couldn't see any country's flag, even the USA, not waving violently in front of a cat-calling spectator. At first most of us, including Nemov, clearly thought this would be the usual brief boo, then dying down. No chance. Getting the bit between their teeth, the audience went on strike. They were not going to shut up, whatever anyone did, until the judges had thought again, and without quiet, the rest of the competitors could not get started. On and on it went, hacks scrambling to ring their papers and holding up their mobiles so that the editors could hear what was going on. Six minutes of stoppage, and counting. I'm not sure it's ever happened at all. Nor has the next development - the judges remarked, putting Nemov up about 0.2 marks, but not in fact changing his ranking.
The booing continued a while (total 10 minutes) but finally Nemov himself mimed the crowd to shush, bowing to say thank you for their efforts, and they slowly calmed down. Paul Hamm, Morgan's brother and already the subject of a possible gold medal dispute since one of his competitors was wrongly marked down in an earlier event, then took to the bars. His routine was extremely brief, and not nearly as impressive as either his brother's or Nemov's. Why am I not surprised that it was marked up and put him temporarily in first place? Cue more booing - but it had no effect, and eventually the rest of the competitors did their routines. An Italian was brilliant, and won (though didn't quite look as good as Nemov), Paul Hamm got second, and third place went to the only other competitor to keep his poise - one gymnast dropped off, and several fumbled and made basic mistakes. Nemov was fifth.
I didn't stay for the medal ceremony - I thought it would get really ugly. There has been much dispute about the 'judgmental' sports here, and lots of tales of idiotic marking. FIG (gymnastics) is the worst, and it left a thoroughly sour taste in the mouth. But it was an object lesson to organisers - if the audience can make enough noise to halt an event, reforms may have to be made to ensure judges "at least get the medallists in the right order", as the Eurosport commentator put it.
Right now, though, it has put me off watching gymnastics for quite a while. Back to the less subjective sports, where the stopwatch or measuring tape may be wrongly used, but we can normally prove that's what happened, and politics is less often a factor.
Quite a few things have been going wrong here at the Games, though they are all minor enough not to really matter. They are tiny niggles, which betray just how close the Greeks were to not getting these Games on at all. Time and effort has gone into some things - the opening ceremony, making sure the sports run well, ticketing, transport communications and the technical side. So far so good, but it's the frills which have been left out which leave life here at the Olympics uncomfortable, boring or difficult.
For instance, the food is utterly rubbish. At any venue, and most media areas, the only food available is provided by McDonalds and Coca-Cola - the former only at the odd large restaurant. The Coca-Cola outlets are more common, but all sell the same things - "hot dogs" (greek style), "pies" (hot filo bundles with cheese or sometimes meat in which look like puffed-up Cornish pasties), pizza slices (which always run out within minutes) , "sandwiches" (Greek short-baguettes with a single slice of cheese or salami in), and fattening junk food - crisps, ice-cream, cookies and nuts. Nothing green. Most have yoghurt, which is OK, but can get tedious. I seriously hope the athletes' village food is better - no wonder many teams decided to make their own accommodation arrangements. You could not be a spectator here and stay all day at the main sports complex without having to trek outside or bring your own lunch. Most Olympics have fun with the "food of the world" concept, I gather, but fat chance here. I think they realised too late they hadn't made provision for food outlets, and decided the quickest way to fill the hole was to grant two of the biggest sponsors a franchise without terms. I particularly pity anyone with a normal diet, or religious restrictions on what they eat.
Everywhere official is planted with shrubs and flowers - but they were put in last month. If they weren't dropping with exhaustion, the marathon runners would have laughed, mile after mile of baby shrubs along their route, which should obviously have been planted a year or more ago, so they could grow to a scenic background. Watch out for them when you see the men's marathon this coming Sunday. The dual carriageway from Athens to the airport is like a giant jigsaw someone's started back to front - the roads are finished and very good, but all the edgy bits (railings, landscaping, hard shoulder) are sitting waiting in piles to be dealt with: it's useable but not complete.
Then there are signposts. Everywhere you see temporary Olympic yellow boards, identifying where everything is, but not many showing what else is off in another direction. A more observant hack than I pointed out that around the complexes and venues there are also white posts bearing flags and plain white fingerboards pointing down every alley. We think they were originally intended to be direction signposts. Well, they haven't been done, which at least will make relabelling easier when the Olympic park is turned over to another use. In the mean time, the poor volunteers are getting used to being asked where to find everything, and cheer themselves up by collecting pins (a whole Olympic story in itself) and making their own home-grown laurel wreaths, which the more extrovert wear to make the public laugh on the gates. It does lead to serious noise pollution though - at every entrance and exit is a volunteer sitting on a high chair (cf Wimbledon umpires) and shouting through megaphones either welcome or goodbye, plus instructions about which way to walk for each destination.
The whole thing has the air of a student's house when Mum and Dad are about to come round for a visit. Everything has been glossed over, tidied up, and hidden behind cushions, in cupboards and in the shed. There's a whole heap of stuff shoved under the bed, but it's ok because Mum won't think to look there. Everything which could leave them open to being accused of holding a "bad Games" has been done, but nothing extra. It isn't a bad Olympics - but it is definitely incomplete.
So what have they done right? Well, they did prioritise correctly. The most important things have been accomplished, for which much credit. The Greeks are very friendly, especially if you start chatting to individual volunteers. Most have made magnificent efforts to speak in English, the lingua franca of the Games public. There is zero pollution (so there, Athens critics), the computer systems work a treat, and the security barely ever holds anyone up (except for the rowing finals, of course). The public spaces are well designed, and the flow of traffic around venues works well. On the whole, we've all been able to do what we needed to do, and on the whole the right medals have ended up with the right athletes. Most of all, the Greeks had some superb ideas. Using the old stadia, Pireus harbour, the Marathon route and the laurel wreaths were inspired PR tricks, and worked brilliantly in practice. And the architecture is outstanding - just a walk around the Olympic park shows you a different beautiful view of the stadium at every turn, while the other venues are well-made and fitting both for the sports and for their settings, even in the heart of old Athens.
So no more carping. Anyway, I've learnt the trick to outwitting jobsworth officials - know the drill better than them and just keep on pushing. Quite often when talking on the phone to older Greek men, they say 'no' as a matter of course, but soon give in when I assure them that I know what I want can be done. I imagine half the time people just give up. This morning I went to arrange a car to the airport with the transport girl at our Gulag. There are no buses scheduled until the end of the Games, when most people are going home. Instead, I'd been told a volunteer would take me, so I asked about it. "No, no buses, we can order you a taxi or you can go on the coach to the main press centre and change to another one with a stop of half an hour", came the answer. Hang on, I said, this is the Olympics. It says in your guide that officials, athletes and media get free transport to any Olympics location, which includes the airport. "Wait a moment" - she phoned her supervisor. "Oh yes, that's OK. Ten o'clock tomorrow morning outside your room? No problem." See? You only have to ask.
Rachel Quarrell at the 2004 Olympics.