I was running down the beachfront of the Copacabana with a few thousand others a few years ago when a drunk couple joined us. It was not long after the sun had come up, and, apparently, a far way away from the time when the sun had gone down for them. It had been some party. He held her shoes and her hand as she danced around him, the memory of a song moving her along in the morning sun.
We ran past her, part of the Nike Run Rio 10km jog along the beaches of Rio to the finish line in Copacabana. I stopped and watched them as they danced along, not seeing nor caring for the sweaty and the heavy of breath. They veered left after he finally became aware of the giggles and the cheers and the sound of a beat that was not entirely in his head. I stopped for a beer at one of the small stalls some 300 metres from the end and got a talking to from an older lady who I think was trying to explain to me that I had not finished yet.
My Portuguese is confined to insults learnt from growing up playing pinball at cafes and Manny at the Radium Beer Hall.
I bought another beer for the road and jogged across the finish, said beer firmly in hand. A Brazilian marketing man from Nike embraced me when I finished, and congratulated me on having a beer with me.
“Rio is a party place, and you are partying,” he said.
Three years later, and Rio’s party has begun. I am not there, the first time since 2004 I have not covered an Olympic Games on the ground, but I am online at iol.co.za.
Join me for the party and my scattered memories of three Olympics. If you listen for long enough, I will tell you of the early chaos of Athens, of a drunk taxi driver who crashed into a pavement, blew his front right tyre and then cursed as the police pulled up. It was joked of Athens that they were still painting the finish line on the track as the first athletics race got under way.
We saw piles of rubble hidden behind fences swathed in branding. We celebrated the shock of the 4x100m freestyle relay team and their gold, and then criticised Nocsa for not supporting them enough.
There were tales from the athletes’ village in Athens that were funny and sad. The team management organised for Michael Johnson, the 400m legend, to give them a motivational chat. Except that athletes like to sleep in late and walk around even less, and management had to rush around to scare up a crowd for Johnson. A South African picked up a copy of Playboy in the shop at the village and was paging through pictures of a nude shoot of US Olympians. As he did so, one of the women in the shoot pointed at it and said, “That’s me.” He had the decency to compliment her.
There are not a lot of good stories from Beijing. Not from the team. One medal. One single medal. The opening ceremony promised to showcase 5000 years of history, and it seemed they did it in real time.
We saw the sun twice. The internet was “managed”. At times you felt trapped in a propaganda whirlpool. Natalie du Toit was, along with Bolt, the biggest story at the Games. There can be few times when a separate press conference has been organised for an athlete who did not win a medal.
London made the Olympics fun again. The Olympic Park was compact. Cameron van der Burgh was magnificent, his celebration touching and poignant.
Chad le Clos tore the Games apart with his wins, and still the story was more about Michael Phelps losing than Le Clos winning. That story will have some twists over the next week.
Burry Stander rode like a superstar. Had his life not been taken, he would be a favourite in Rio. Maria Mutola, the 800m legend, told us Caster Semenya had bottled it in the 800m and should have won, running from the front instead of coming from behind.
London partied, just as Rio will party this week. The Olympics is a time to walk along the beach, your shoes off, a song in your head and a dance in your toes. It’s a time for memories and magic.
The Olympics is a time to run, but also sing and dance
Independent Media