Life After Full-time Work Blog

As close as I’ll ever get to touching a gold medal!

[Note: This is the third and last blog post about my lifelong love affair with the Summer Olympic Games. Normal service resumes next time!]

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Finally, Paris 2024 – 100 years after the 1924 Paris Olympics, and 12 years after London was unexpectedly awarded the 2012 Games over the then favorite, Paris. How could we not go? A year in advance, we booked and paid for two rooms at our little Paris home-away-from-home hotel (we knew David and Mary Beth wouldn’t be there, so it was Susan and me, and Kathryn). And Kathryn, living in Europe, could go online as soon as the tickets became available, and we got tickets to four track and field sessions and the women’s soccer final, and planned to be somewhere on the course for the men’s and women’s cycling road races. We knew Kathryn would have to leave before the Games ended, as she was working for the EF Pro Cycling team in communications and marketing (and whatever other odd jobs were necessary, such as handing out water bottles to the riders at various points of their races), and had to be in Rotterdam for the start of the Tour de France Femmes.

Having arrived on late on a Friday, she went for her own run (she’s quite the amateur athlete in her own right) first thing Saturday morning, exploring some of the cycling road race route, and decided that our best place for seeing the riders go by would be near the top of the Butte Montmartre, on the Rue Lepic, because they would go by three times, and with the slope (a kilometer with an average 7% rise, peaking at 9% in the final 100 meters) that would be where the cyclists would be slowest, and any attack by a competitor likely to arise. So we trudged up that hill early, long before the race started, and placed ourselves in front, right behind the barriers. We were there for 6 ½ hours, by the time the men passed by a third time, and were either standing or (in my case) occasionally seated on the sidewalk with my feet in the gutter.

But the atmosphere was wonderful! There were strong French and Belgian supporters across the road from each other, and the friendly rivalry was great fun, with chants (“allez les bleus!”) and singing and national anthems and faces with flags painted on them, and even the French gendarmes, notoriously tough, got caught up in the spirit and laughed and joked with the crowd. (In fact, this was a marvelous aspect of the Games throughout, the friendliness and helpfulness of the gendarmerie, who had support from police teams from Germany and the UK – at least, from our own observation – and the cheeriness of the French crowds as a whole.) So those 6 ½ hours actually passed relatively quickly, and we enjoyed the experience.

But for the women’s race on the Sunday, we did change one thing. Susan led us to Monoprix, and we bought three folding stools that we took to the same spot the next day so we could have something to sit on. Quite a difference!

Kathryn’s EF team had five riders competing (each for their own country, of course), and Kathryn recognized each one as they came by – astonishing, to me, because the first time they came by they were all in a group (the peloton, as the main body of riders is called).

On the final circuit there were two riders leading together, with the US’s Kristen Faulkner (one of the EF Pro Cycling riders) and another rider separated from the peloton in chase of them, as they passed us. Kathryn followed the race on a cycling website on her cell phone, and updated us (and the crowd around us) every 30 seconds or so. Kristen gave chase, caught the two leaders, and passed them. Wasn’t this a dangerous tactic, I asked Kathryn – wouldn’t the others let Kristen do the work and then haul her in? It’s Kristen’s only chance, replied Kathryn; she hasn’t the speed to outsprint them in a tight finish. And Kristen moved further and further ahead because, unlike in a team race, the other riders didn’t co-operate with each other in keeping her lead down, and … Kristen won!

An EF rider! Long story short, NBC and others wanted interviews etc, all important from a national celebration perspective, none of which had anything to do with EF. But EF couldn’t just let this go by. By the end of the day Kathryn was in touch with Kristen, and arranged for a photo shoot for EF. And Kristen won a second gold medal (!) in the team pursuit event three days later, on the track.

Eagerly, I wanted to go to the photo shoot, but of course there was only a need for Kristen, Kathryn and the photographer to be there, and my presence would have been a needlessly complicating factor. (And of course, as the only EF staff member then in Paris, Kathryn was busy all the time responding to all kinds of requests for contact with Kristen.) So I asked Kathryn if she could arrange for one of the pictures to be of her holding a gold medal, as this would be the closest I will ever come to Olympic gold. And I had a question for Kristen, a question relevent to only a few dozen people in the history of the world: having got two golds at the same Olympics, could she tell which medal was for which event?

After the photo shoot, Kathryn attached two photos in a text message to Susan and me. One shows her and Kristen, each holding a gold medal. The other shows Kathryn holding both the gold medals. I cried. The photos are now framed and in our bedroom, where Susan and I can see them every day.

Oh, and that question for Kristen? Yes, she could tell which medal was for which event, because, although all the medals at the Olympics have identical fronts and backs (but of course, some are gold, some silver and some bronze), on the rim of each medal there’s the laser-printed name of the event. A further question: In how many languages? (Because at the events all announcements were both in French and in English.) Answer: One language, French. (There, now you know something I’ll bet you weren’t aware of before!)

That would have been enough to make the Paris Games memorable and personal. But, little did we know it, there was more to come.

Through all the events we had seen in Sydney 2000 and London 2012, we had never seen a Canadian victory. In Paris, on the first day that Kathryn and I attended the athletics events (the Tuesday), Camryn Rogers won the women’s hammer throw gold medal, a massive meter and a half ahead of the second placed athlete. We waved the large Canadian flag that we had brought with us (more accurately, that Susan had given us, just in case), and cheered as loudly as we could when Camryn stood on the podium and had the gold medal placed around her neck. And as the flags were raised (the Canadian one at the top) and O Canada was played, we sang the anthem. I choked up. And I finally realized why the winning athletes don’t often belt out their country’s anthem: if I, with no connection to the gold medal, choke up, how emotional must they feel? Tears would be much more likely, tears of joy, of stress released, of celebrating the lifetime achievement and all the training and luck involved. Suddenly, I understood, in my own little way. Again, the Olympics felt personal.

And it still wasn’t over, that personal angle.

Yes, we saw amazing things. I particularly enjoyed seeing Sebastian Coe handing out medals. And what a fantastic idea to have the men’s pole vault medals handed out by Sergey Bubka, the Ukranian who dominated the event for many years and broke the world record many times. I treasure the photo I took of him giving the gold medal to “Mondo” Duplantis, who today dominates the event and has broken the world record many times: from one legend to another.

But that personal angle came back, when Canada won the men’s 4×100 meters relay, with the American team first having to be changed when Noah Lyles contracted Covid and then screwing up a baton exchange, and Andre de Grasse coming from behind on the final leg to win the gold for Canada. And the medal ceremony, with four Canadians on the top of the podium and the Canadian flag raised and O Canada and choking up again. Again, not literally personal, but very emotional.

Susan and I saw the women’s soccer final, but I mention that just for the record – it wasn’t an outstanding game, and given the embarrassment of Canada’s coach cheating via a drone flown over the New Zealand team’s training sessions, perhaps it was as well that Canada didn’t get to the final to defend the gold medal won in Tokyo.

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Looking back on the Paris 2024 Games, it’s the joy and enthusiasm I remember most. The mornings we didn’t go to a stadium, Susan and I wandered around Paris (most of the places we know well were unapproachable or boarded up because events were being held in those magnificent surroundings), and felt an atmosphere of pleasure and elation and high spirits. Perhaps Tony Estanguet, President of the Organizing Committee for the Games (and what an orator!), said it best, as the athletes all gathered together in the stadium for the Closing Ceremony. He praised not only the police but also the thousands of volunteers (who were always around, visible, helping, smiling – a great tradition started, I think, at the London Olympics) – and then the French spectators, who, far from the world’s expectation of “a nation of implacable complainers,” became “unbridled supporters who don’t want to stop singing,” and showed a passion that “turned every venue into a raucous arena, every medal into a national holiday.” And: “To you, athletes, what can I say? We knew you would be brilliant, but you were magic. You made us happy, you made us feel alive … The world needed these emotions so much.”

So true! When the Games ended, it was difficult not to feel flat. So many positive emotions, for so long. Truly, what the world needed.

I doubt that I’ll ever attend an Olympic Games in person again. But I’ll follow them on TV as long as I’m around, and my love affair will continue. And my joy will come not only from whatever happens in the unknown future, but also from the past that I have tried to recapture in these blog posts.

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