Even though we might have had a chance to buy tickets to Olympic events (last year, when they went on sale), we never really committed to trying to get tickets to anything. Last week we did walk by the volleyball stadium which is about 4 (big) blocks away - there were lots of people asking if anyone had tickets to sell so we gave up any thought of obtaining some and checking out an event.
Anyway, last Sunday we actually tried to get out for the Women's Marathon but had figured it would be later than it actually was. The noise of 4 helicopters got us out of the house quickly, but it was pretty much done by the time we got there. We hung out a little and cheered for the last place runner, though.
This morning we went out and watched the Men's Marathon as the runners passed by the front gate of the university.We were early enough to cross the road and stand on the side where the runners were running. Stationed just a bit past the 22 mile mark, we were all surprised that there was such a small number of runners (maybe somewhere around 70 or 80 by the official count but several did not start or did not finish).
There was no real "pack" except for the few groups of 5 or 6 who'd go by periodically, so it never seemed like there were that many. I think they all passed in about 15 minutes.
I observed that the crowd was extremely lackluster. We hollered for everybody (sometimes in the runner's own language if Dan happened to know how to say "hi"), and gave an especial cheer to the runners from countries that are home to some of our friends (Mexico, Brasil, Tanzania, Japan, Korea, Israel). We couldn't tell where a lot of the runners were from, but we whistled for them all. 
The crowd only perked up when a Chinese runner came by (I think there were only two), though toward the end a few other people started yelling, "Jia You!" to anybody who passed by. I don't think I would've expected anything else, knowing how things work here, but it would've been nice for the crowd to cheer all those hard working athletes on. Ah well, I'm an idealist.
1 comment:
It seems like you may have rubbed off on those few who started cheering for runners regardless of their race. May be they felt like you were on the "other" side and against China, but some finally realized you were just for everyone. Did you cheer for the two Chinese runners too?
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