How my love for the event rose to new heights
I’ve been in love with the summer Olympic Games (mainly the track and field athletic events) since Melbourne 1956, when I was 12 years old. And as I grew up, I followed then diligently, almost religiously, for 40 years. And then suddenly an unimaginable opportunity arose: perhaps I could go to Sydney in 2000, and experience the Games in person.
My career with Russell Investments had made me a global consultant, and I visited our Sydney office many times, enjoying the multiple opportunities to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb, but even more, making personal friendships with many wonderful Sydney colleagues. And now the Olympics were going to be held there!
My wife Susan knew how much I wanted to go, and God bless her, when I told her how much the tickets would cost, she used the words “That’s not much, amortized over a lifetime.” (Yes, she actually used the word “amortized.”) And the whole thing was feasible because my Russell colleague and dear friend Chris Condon invited me to stay with him and his family. (Chris and I had worked closely over the years, even though thousands of miles apart, and met on my many trips to Sydney, and then Chris worked in London and I joined him there for a few weeks before his return to Sydney.)
I asked our daughter Kathryn if she wanted to join me (I bought two tickets to everything) but she said her travels in South-East Asia would prevent her from doing so; and our son David simply couldn’t leave his job in New York. So I called David’s Wake Forest University best friend Tremayne (who by this time had become like an adopted son to us) and invited him. He guessed: “So the biological kids can’t make it, and you’re turning to the non-biological kids?” And I said, “Yes, exactly.” I’ll never forget his joyful response: “Let the good times roll!” So Tremayne and I flew to Sydney to stay with Chris and Liz Condon, who rearranged their own kids’ sleeping arrangements to accommodate us. (How can you ever adequately say “thank you” for something like their kindness?)
As it turned out, Kathryn could come after all – but the second ticket for each event had been promised to Tremayne. No problem – she persuaded him to give her the tickets to a few events (she could twist him around her little finger!), and the three of us lined up together in the enormous queue to get tickets to the other events that Kathryn and Tremayne wanted to go to. (And Chris and Liz arranged for Kathryn to stay with an American colleague who had just moved to Sydney.)
We had the most wonderful time!
Then we waited a couple of days after the Games finished before returning to the States (where I was then located), to avoid the colossal airport crowds, and took the opportunity to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb together before we left. I have a photograph of three totally happy people at the top of that bridge!
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It wasn’t till 2012 that I had another chance to go to the Olympics. And then it became the family event of a lifetime, one of the all-time highlights of my life. It was in London, so we had a place to stay in: Susan and me, David and his wife Mary Beth, and Kathryn. In fact, two of David’s friends (Kristin, also from his Wake Forest days, and Wendy) asked if they could stay with us too. Of course, I said; all the beds are assigned, but we have two very comfortable mattresses for the floor. And again I got a memorable and joyful answer, from Kristin: “The operative word isn’t ‘mattress,’ it’s ‘free’! We’ll be there!”
I didn’t care how much it cost – I told everyone we’d try to get tickets to every event that everyone wanted to go to (meaning you had to pay the top price in advance, to be reasonably sure of getting the tickets). Worth every penny! There are no words to describe the pure joy of it all.
We all went our separate ways every day, and got together every evening at home, where we’d upload our photographs to the laptop and watch a replay of the day’s events on TV. Meanwhile, we had not only been to the events (one day our tickets were in the very first row!), but we (particularly Kathryn) had mingled with the athletes and commentators and chatted with them and had our photographs taken with them. What memories!
Among the amazing once-in-a-lifetime occurrences were the multiple gold-medal victories of Usain Bolt and Mo Farah, and we got a photograph of them celebrating together. And I saw my favorite athlete, Allyson Felix, win an individual (200 meters) gold and two relay gold medals.
And it wasn’t all athletics. Susan and Mary Beth went to two days of gymnastics and a day of diving, we went to the women’s soccer final (in fact, going back in time, the women’s soccer final in Sydney in 2000 remains one of the most exciting games I have ever seen), we were right up front for the men’s cycling road race. And one day we went to Henley for the rowing (because Kathryn was a rower at high school and university), and Kathryn found herself seated next to Adam Kreek, Canada’s gold medalist in the men’s eights in Beijing in 2008. Kathryn introduced me to Adam, and I stayed in touch with him and some years later included an inspiring quote from him in my book on happiness.
I think I have my photos assembled in a collection somewhere in the Cloud. We took hundreds between us. They bring back some of the memories, as well as the joy. Oh wait, I know where many of the other photos are. They were taken by David, Kathryn and Mary Beth. And they assembled the best of them into a magnificent color printed album that they presented to Susan and me for our 40th wedding anniversary some months later. It was so wonderful that we ended up getting extra copies as mementos for the kids!
Among them are a couple of special photos of Kathryn: one of her being interviewed, in the front row of the crowd, just before the women’s marathon, another of her image on a huge screen placed behind the crowd.
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Paris had been the favorite to be assigned the 2012 Olympic Games, and we had arranged provisionally for three rooms to be booked at the little Paris hotel we considered our home-away-from-home (since we had been staying there before the final stage of each year’s Tour de France cycling event for some 20 years). Unexpectedly, the Games were awarded to London. And within minutes of the announcement I got a friendly email from the hotel’s manager, recognizing that we wouldn’t be in Paris for the 2012 Olympics after all (although of course we came for the Tour de France). Well, Paris was finally awarded the Olympic Games, for 2024, and of course we had to be there. I remember thinking that it would be great fun, but nothing could ever compare with London 2012.
It turned out to be true: great fun, not to be compared with London 2012. What we didn’t expect was how personal the Paris Games would feel.
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I have written about retirement planning before and some of that material also relates to topics or issues that are being discussed here. Where relevant I draw on material from three sources: The Retirement Plan Solution (co-authored with Bob Collie and Matt Smith, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), my foreword to Someday Rich (by Timothy Noonan and Matt Smith, also published by Wiley, 2012), and my occasional column The Art of Investment in the FT Money supplement of The Financial Times, published in the UK. I am grateful to the other authors and to The Financial Times for permission to use the material here.