The
Summer Olympics finally came to a close in Rio this past weekend, with greatly disappointing
results for the Finns. All and all, Finland garnered only one medal, for women’s
boxing, and even that was only a bronze. This is a bit shocking, considering how there were reasonably promising hopes for medals in some other events, mainly sailing and javelin throw.
It
is, in fact, Finland’s poorest result in its entire Olympic history, which is
almost a decade older than the country itself. Finland, at the time a Grand
Duchy of the Russian Empire, first took part in the Games in 1908, competing as an entity separate from Russia. I guess this is analogous to the way that – which was news to
me – Puerto Rico participates under its own flag, though the Caribbean island is actually part of the United States.
The
dearth of Finnish medals in Rio is a shame, especially since it's always seemed to me that the Olympics figures quite prominently in Finnish national identity, at least more so than for the
average American. This is, after all, the land of the runners Paavo Nurmi and
Lasse Viren.
Nurmi,
the “Flying Finn”, was the winner of 12 Olympic medals over the course of his
career, not too shabby in the 1920s. Some half-century later, Lasse
Viren earned a total of five medals, four of them gold, during his two Olympic
appearances. He famously fell in the 1972 games in Munich during the
10,000-meter final, but was amazingly able to overtake the pack and win the
race. Coincidentally, the same thing happened in Rio with Britain’s Mo Farah,
who also managed to win his 10K race after tumbling in the 10th lap.
Now, the era of Viren and other greats seems to be receding, no disrespect to the athletes of today. No doubt a lot of introspection has already begun over why Finland’s
result fell so short, especially compared to the remarkable 15 medals that
similarly sized Denmark won.
The
last time Finland could boast a summer-game medal count in the double-digits
was the 1984 Los Angeles games, when it brought home a full dozen Olympic
medallions. Since then, Finland has averaged only three or four. That record
might now be trending even a bit lower. As I said, that would be a shame.
Luckily,
the Americans in Rio did spectacularly much better, based on all the news I
gleamed from Twitter and CNN. (And I thought, according to Trump, the US "doesn’t win anymore”.) Watching the different events themselves on TV was a
bit hit and miss for us, due to all kinds of scheduling complications, so we didn’t
end up watching much of the Games this time.
But
there was once a time when we got to see the Games in person.
The
Summer Olympics of 1996 where held in Atlanta, a mere 70 or so miles from my home
town. Since we were making visits to my parents every summer in those days, a
chance to go to the Olympics was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.
But
deciding which events to see was tricky. As I recall, we had to place orders
for tickets over a year in advance. For each day of the event, you could
request up to three events, in order of preference, with a hope of getting tickets
for at least one of them. Since we felt we couldn’t be assured of getting even one
event for any particular day, we took a scattershot approach and tried to spread
our ticket buying over a 7-day period, not necessarily expecting (or, considering
the costs, even hoping) to get something every day.
For
two of those days, our first choice was kayaking. The whitewater slalom
competition took place on the Ocoee River, just across the state line in Tennessee
and not far from my parents’ place. Our other first choices were one day of
mountain biking and two days each of athletics and dressage.
I’m
sure that at the time my wife had to explain to me what dressage was. The name
itself doesn’t give much of a clue that it involves horses performing a precise
and intricate (and slow paced) routine.
It’s an impressive sport, considering the amount of control needed by both horse and rider to carry out such complicated moves, especially since I
can’t imagine making a horse do anything myself. But
as a girl, my wife had done a lot of horseback riding, even competing in
jumping and dressage, so she better understood the appeal of the sport than I
did.
For
our second choices we picked athletics, gymnastics, horse jumping and, again,
dressage. Third choices included tennis, basketball, baseball and cycling. At
least, I think there were our actual preferences. This is all based on info in
a computer file that has survived many PC upgrades and several disk crashes to remain intact two decades later deep, deep in my current hard drive – kind of amazing in itself.
In
the end, we got about half of our first choices and one of the our second. Sadly, no
kayaking. But we did get mountain biking and two days of track and field at Turner Field. And a full three days of dressage. I think we underestimated how much
easier the dressage tickets were to get.
I
don’t remember much about the competitions themselves, more about the
atmosphere and the venues. Let’s face it, sitting in a big stadium, you see a
lot less of what’s going on down on the field than the average TV viewer.
At
the mountain biking race, that sport’s Olympic debut, I recall the conspicuous turnout
of among the spectators of Norwegians, easy identifiable as Norwegian sport fans
are around the world by their fondness for national flags and cow bells.
Funnily,
I have only the barest memory of the dressage competition, or even the venue.
But I do recall a little criminal activity that I engaged in related to the sport.
We
had gotten a bit more dressage tickets than we expected, six all together, in
reality about double the number we wanted. So, we decided to try and sell the
extra and recoup some money.
We
showed up at the Georgia International Horse Park outside Atlanta, which served
as the venue for both dressage and mountain biking, just after the women's bike race. Feeling a bit awkward, I
stood near the parking lot holding up our tickets trying to get the attention
of all the off-road bike fans heading for their cars.
Some young guys, upon hearing I was selling dressage tickets, said something
like “Dressage? Dude, you’ve got the wrong crowd here!”
Someone
else helpfully pointed out there were police in the parking lot nearby and
suggested I should move further away before I got arrested for scalping.
Scalping?
I had not even considered that what I was doing was remotely illegal. First of
all, I was selling the tickets at face value. Being a poor excuse for a
capitalist, I wasn’t trying to make a profit, just break even.
To be honest, I
don’t even understand why ticket scalping is a crime, especially in
free-enterprising America. People sell things to other people on the secondary
market all the time. Why should tickets to sporting events be any different?
Of
course, arguing these points to an arresting officer might not be very productive. So, thankful for the tip, I moved deeper into the crowd of mountain
bike fans moving toward me. I remember in particular a suburban mom who was put into a tough spot by my offer. She was accompanied
by two or three teenage girls who practically squealed when they saw what kind
of tickets I was selling.
I
seem to recall the poor woman was able to resist their pleas. In any case, I managed to offload all the extra tickets eventually to someone and escape the clutches of the law.
And to this day that small triumph remains my own personal best during an Olympics.
 |
Who knows? I might be somewhere in that crowd.
Turner Stadium during the Atlanta Olympics. |
