Rio 2016 - Day 5 (August 10)

Full disclosure - It is now August 27th and we have been back in the US for 11 days. I apologize for the time that it is taking to finish this blog. We've just spent the last 5 days getting Sean installed in college at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) - the same university that Beth and I attended. With that responsibility out of the way, writing this blog should move along a little quicker. Thanks again for your patience!

Today (August 10th), we are off to the Youth Arena in Deodora Olympic park for two women's basketball matches. Deodora, in the northwest part of Rio, is probably the furthest away of the venues that we will visit. Fortunately, the games don't start until 11:30 am so we have plenty of time to get there. Unfortunately, it looks like we are going to have our first rainy day of this Olympics. It is drizzling when we leave the hotel and the weather report is for more rain later in the day. I don't want to cover my pin vest up with a raincoat until I really need to so I elect to keep it in my backpack as we head off to the General Osório metro station about 5 blocks away. There, we get on either Línea 1 or 2 for the ride downtown to the Central station where we will switch to a train for the ride to Deodora.

It is well past morning rush hour so the Metro is much less crowded than yesterday. We have a conversation with an older woman who went to college in the US and speaks quite good English. I ask her why so many children are attending the Olympics. I would have thought that schools would be in session in August. She smiled and told us that all of the schools in Rio shortened their summer breaks in January-February so that they could shut down all of the schools in Rio during the Olympics. I hand her a pin when we get to our stop and head off to the train.

Finding the train was a little difficult. It involved leaving the Metro station and heading into the Central do Brasil train station. There are some volunteers who appear to work for the train line, but it takes us a couple tries to find one who speaks English. Once we know the right direction, we have to pretend that we are salmon swimming upstream because most people are going in the opposite direction. While trying not to get run over, we are looking for a sign that says SuperVia and once we find that, we are looking for the platform for the trains to Santa Cruz. It takes a little time, but we finally find a train about to leave for Santa Cruz on platform 2.

Walking down the platform, we see that this train line seems to include a history of trains. We see what looks in the distance like a sleek, high speed train. We also see a couple trains that look like they've been left to rust for about 50 years. Ours is somewhere in between - well used, but hardly new. This train is really full - not Tokyo subway full (where a person is responsible for cramming a few extra people onto each train), but still full. This will be standing room all the way to our stop called Magalhães Bastos - about a 30 minute ride if we've understood the spectator information correctly. While there are a lot of Olympic spectators (this train line also goes to the Olympic Stadium which hosts athletics and the Maracana Stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies are held along with the men's and women's soccer finals), there are even more locals. I understand that the Brazilian people have really embraced mass transit in a way that has yet to occur in the US. This may be because of the high cost of owning a car, but also because the highway system is near gridlock most of the time. This is particularly true during the Olympics when a lot of major streets are only open for official Olympic vehicles.

Once the train starts moving, a variety of men start moving up and down the train aisle. Some have microphones and speakers, some are simply calling out. But all of them are selling something - one has a sort of cracker, another has water, still another has what looks like handbags. As far as we can tell, this appears to be the way they make a living - buy a ticket to take a train from point A to point B and then spend the rest of the day going back and forth on trains. It is also the first time we've really been able to listen to Brazilian Portuguese. While the written language is a little strange with accents, circumflexes and tildes, we can sort of make out the meaning. But the spoken language is totally alien. They seem to add a lot of sh or ch sounds to many of the syllables. So, for instance, when we see a guy selling Kit Kat candy bars, he says Kitch Kash.

The ride is uneventful and we manage to get off at the right station. At the end of the ramp down from the train line, we see an armored vehicle:

Overhead, we see a fairly large drone. Is something going on? We don't know, but in a few hundred yards, we see the reason. The Deodora Olympic park has been built across the street from a major military base. There are soldiers everywhere around here with their automatic rifles. They've also put up concrete barricades on the streets to prevent anyone from driving their vehicles into the crowds. This is probably the safest we've felt since we've been here! The walk to Deodora is long - at least a mile along a very straight road with the military base on the left and what looks like officer's quarters on the right. I'm not sure if we are ahead or behind the crowd because there are very few spectators here.

Finally, we reach the security line for the park and head inside. Directly to our left when we enter the park is one of the many live sites where Olympic action is broadcast all day and well into the evening. If we had more time, we'd stop and watch because it is very difficult to keep up on what else is going on at the Olympics when you're spending most of your waking hours traveling to or from events. But we are a little short on time so we make our way to the Youth Arena. Deodora is shaped sort of like a barbell - a wide area on one end that includes the live site, but also includes the X-Park stadium for the BMX cycling course and whitewater canoe/kayak and the shooting stadium, a narrow walkway in the middle that appears to pass over a major road and another big area that includes the Youth Arena  for basketball and fencing, the stadium for rugby sevens and equestrian events and the hockey (field, not ice!) arena.

Just as we get to the Youth Arena, the rain, which had been holding off for most of the day, begins. Just as rapidly, men, who must have been waiting for this moment all week, arrive to sell clear plastic raincoats/garbage bags. Beth and Sean take out their umbrellas while I discover that if I just drape my raincoat over my head and backpack, I can stay dry and still have people see my pins. This is a good thing because the line we are standing in does not seem to be moving:

One English speaking volunteer arrives and spends some time trying to get this line to go back and forth like the other security lines so that it takes up less space. He is only partially successful since a lot of the people in the line would prefer to be back under the trees than out in the open like we are.

Eventually, the security tents opened (to the cheers of all of the people standing in the rain) and the line began moving. It was nice to get out of the rain. However, we were getting hungry and the food tents were outside so Beth went back out into the rain to get food before the game began. About this time, I realize that I have not put a new battery in my camera and it is running on fumes. I'm not sure whether the startup or constantly leaving the camera on drains power faster so I decide to switch off the camera after each picture. We'll see how far the remaining charge will go.

Normally, we buy our Olympic tickets about 18 months in advance. At that time, we don't even know which countries will qualify for the Olympics let alone which teams we will see. So today, we got lucky. Our first game is Serbia versus the United States. We don't expect much of a contest. The US women's team has not lost an Olympic basketball game since 1992 and has won five straight gold medals. They've also won their first two matches; 121-56 over Senegal and 103-63 over Spain. On the other hand, the Serbian team has yet to win a match; losing 65-59 to Spain and 71-67 to Canada. The US team is formidable. They are led by 34 year old Diana Taurasi - a 9-time all WNBA 1st team selection, 5-time WNBA scoring leader and 2-time college player of the year.  But she is far from the only star on this team which includes 12 WNBA players. One of the other coaches in the tournament was quoted as saying that he did not think that there was a non-American player in the tournament that could even make the US team! However, the Serbian team does have a number of women who play professionally (including several in the WNBA), but here is an example of the kind of problem that the Serbians have matching up with the Americans:

That "little" Serbian player is 1.90 m (6'3") Jelena Milovanovic. She is one of the better Serbian players and plays for the Washington Mystics in the WNBA. But she is trying to get a rebound away from 2.03 m (6'8") Brittney Griner. That is just not going to happen! But the Serbians do have a plan. They are going to try to bomb away from outside the 3-point line, led by a pair of small forwards, 1.89 m (6'2") Sonja Petrovic:

and 1.88 m (6'2") Danielle Page:

If you think that Page does not sound like a particularly Serbian name, you are right. Danielle was born in Colorado Springs, CO presumably to an American father and Serbian mother. She played college basketball at the University of Nebraska, but went undrafted by the WNBA and now plays professionally in Hungary. 

When the game started, it took the many Brazilian fans in attendance only a few seconds to decide that they are going to root for the Serbians. They certainly like the underdog and will cheer wildly for their chosen team no matter the score. The downside of this enthusiasm is that they will boo the other team incessantly whenever they touch the ball. When Page hit a 3-pointer to tie the score at 16-16 for the 4th Serbian 3-pointer on 5 tries and causing their Brazilian fans to give them a standing ovation when the US called time out, their strategy was looking pretty good. But after the time out, Taurasi hit 3 straight 3-pointers to increase the US lead to 31-21. After that, it was pretty much all downhill for Serbia. Page, Petrovic (who is a teammate of Taurasi's on the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA) and Milovanovic  play quite well and finish with 15 points each. But the US got 25 points from Taurasi, 17 points from WNBA rookie Breanna Stewart:

and 15 points from 1.93m (6'4") center Tina Charles:

seen here sporting a facemask to protect her broken nose. The final score was 110-84. Charles, Stewart and Taurasi share something else besides being the leading US scorers in this game. They all played college basketball for the University of Connecticut under US Women's national team coach Gino Auriemma. In fact, US team members Sue Bird and Maya Moore also played at UConn!

Our tickets allow us to stay to see the second game, which is between Canada and Senegal, but my camera battery has run out and we are all getting hungry and staying for the entire second game would mean eating another meal of quite poor stadium food. We decide to head for home after watching the first half of the game (which Canada led 33-24). This is a great improvement for Senegal who has already lost to the US by 65 points and to China by 37 points. They are clearly enjoying the support of all of the Brazilian fans and it is showing in their play. But the quality of play is not nearly as good as in the first game so we are not unhappy about leaving early.

On our way out of the Olympic park, we realize the reason for the long walk into the park. The signs direct us to a train station that is different from the one we arrived at and is right in the middle of the park. It is only used for outbound traffic while the Magalhães Bastos is only used for inbound traffic. We are standing on the platform for only a minute or two before a train arrives to take us back to the Central station. Whatever anyone is saying about the Olympics back home, we are very happy with the transportation system!

We're pretty tired from all of the walking yesterday, so we decide to stop at a falafel takeout place on the way back to the hotel from the General Osório metro station. Our waitress does not speak any English, but one of the great things about staying in a tourist area is that most of the restaurants have English menus. We point to items on the English menu, she looks on the Portuguese menu to see what we want and places the order. The food is great. In Brazil, the tips are included with the bill, but I leave our waitress an Olympic pin as an extra tip. Then we head across the street to the gelato place we visited a few days ago. The woman behind the counter recognizes us and proudly points to the USA rings pin that she is now wearing on her apron. We place our orders and then head back to the hotel to watch the evening's Olympic coverage.

We have noticed that even though there are something like 20 Olympic channels, they tend to fixate coverage on the few that the Brazilians are good at. This is the same as NBC does in the US. The good thing is that the Brazilians are good at things that the US is typically terrible at so we get to watch some different sports. We see a lot of futbol (soccer), but we also see a lot of judo!

Until next time, stay tuned!

Steps for the day - 8,219

Rio 2016 - Day 4 (August 9)

We have already been home from Rio for a day. My apologies for the delay in completing this blog. If you can bear with me, I hope to finish it in the next week or two.

Today, we have archery. Unlike the previous days, this event is at an arena located near the city center rather than near the Barra Olympic park. This means that we have to take the Metro 1 or 2 lines and instead of trains that are filled with only Olympic spectators and team or staff members, we'll be on trains loaded with people going to work. The event starts at 9 am so we leave early to make sure we get there on time.

At each Metro station, there is a big green board that tells spectators how to get to the various venues. The instructions for this event are to get on Linha (Line) 1 and get off at Central if your tickets say Entry A or at Praça Onze if your tickets say Entry B. Wow, a stadium large enough to have two Metro stops?

The Praça Onze station is in a quiet residential neighborhood. The signage is not great, but there are a lot of Olympic volunteers around to point us in the correct direction. This turns out to be important as we are directed toward a huge, and fairly old concrete structure. When we come out on the other side, this is what we see:

On either side are huge grandstands each topped with a light tower. But the center space is too narrow for futbol (soccer) - and it is paved. What is this place? Beth suggested a drag race strip, but we don't see any scoreboards or a area blacked with burned rubber from tires. As we reach the end, we see one of the infamous favelas - the urban slums of Rio. Here is a closer view:

Approximately 20% of Rio's 6+ million people live in favelas like this one. Many are crime ridden, but like in poor areas around the world, the people that suffer the most from the crime are the ones that live there. Most of the favelas are located high up hillsides so they have great views of the surroundings. Rio's geology consists of a whole bunch of granite intrusions formed in a similar way to Yosemite Valley in California. These intrusions are very steep so maybe the favelas ended up in areas that could not be easily developed?

Anyway, the sight of the favela and the name of the stadium Sombodromo finally gave me the answer to the use of this stadium. Here is a view in it's more typical usage:

This is the stadium where the samba contest takes place during the Rio Carnival in February. The contest is a battle for supremacy of samba skills between the many samba schools, which often represent specific favelas. It holds about 90,000 spectators, but there are many, many people there who do not have seats. 

The Olympic archery competition takes place at the far end of the stadium near the arch in the previous picture. When we walk into the stadium, there is practically no one in the stands:

This is starting to be a trend for this Olympics. The Brazilians will show up to an event that they are unfamiliar with, but only if there is a Brazilian athlete taking part. This is too bad because we have enjoyed archery each time we've seen it. Confirming my guess about the use of this stadium, the event starts with a small samba performance:

While Brazilians come in all colors, you will notice that most of the samba performers are darker skinned. This is also true of the populations of the favelas - they tend to be darker skinned than the average. However, it is not clear, at least to us, that this income inequality is racially based. We see people of all colors who appear to be financially secure.

Just before the archery matches begin, we see our first mosquitoes of our trip. Three mosquitoes in 5 days - this gives you an idea of how overblown the whole Zika thing was. The stands are filled with Brazilians in tank tops and shorts so there is a significant amount of exposed skin available for these few mosquitoes. Sean is willing to bet that there are no Zika carrying mosquitoes with a taste for North American blood. But we did pay a lot of attention to these few bugs until the wind picked up and blew them away.

Today's contest are individual matches in the rounds of 32 and 16. At the beginning of the individual archery competition, each competitor shoots 12 groups of 6 arrows. The distance from archer to target is 70 meters and the target is a bulls-eye with 10 concentric rings for scores of 10 to 1. After each set of 3 arrows for each competitor, the judges come out to look at the targets:

If the arrow is on a line, it counts as being in the higher scoring circle so this competitor scored 10-9-8 for 27 points. With a high score of 10 points per arrow, the highest possible score in the qualification round is 720 points. After that, the top 64 archers in the qualification round are placed into a bracket so that the number 1 ranked archer will shoot against the number 64 ranked archer, 2 against 63 and so on in the round of 64. In Rio, Woojin Kim of Korea set an Olympic and World record in the qualification round with a score of 700 while Gavin Sutherland of Zimbabwe was seeded 64th with a score of 566. In the women's qualification round, Misun Choi of Korea was seeded first with a score of 669 while Yessica Camilo Gonzalez of the Dominican Republic was seeded 64th.

 This is not your standard bows and arrows. Take a look at this recursive bow:

Each of the little nobs and bars are designed to perfectly balance the bow. They can also be adjusted to account for the wind. Each athlete's coach stands behind the archer with a spotting scope to help the archer adjust the bow for the wind conditions.

Each set consists of 3 arrows for each archer so the maximum score is 30. If an archer wins, he/she gets 2 points. If they tie, each archer gets 1 point. The winner is the first archer to get 6 points. One of the first matches is between 12th seeded Seungyun Lee of Korea and 53rd seed Daniel Rezende Xavier of Brazil:

There aren't many people here, but there is a very vocal group wearing Korean shirts:

Note that most of these fans look decidedly un-Korean. This appears to be a rent-a-crowd. I had seen a big group of people in these shirts outside the stadium, but couldn't figure out what was going on. It appears that a Korean person was rounding up people and giving them a shirt and bangers if they would cheer for Korea. It is not clear whether they also got tickets to the event in the deal, but I would not be surprised. The funny thing is that the Koreans need no support, the have won about two-thirds of the medals in archery since it was introduced in the 1980's. As expected, Lee also needs no help, beating Rezende Xavier in 4 sets: 28-22, 30-27, 27-28 and 28-26 for a score of 6 points to 2.

At the other end of the spectrum of rooting for an athlete, we see this couple:

who are clearly the parents of Japanese archer (and 10th seed) Kaori Kawanaka of Japan. TV tends to focus on the contenders to win medals, but about 95% of the athletes here have no expectations of winning a medal. The Olympics is the prize that they have won for being one of the top couple of athletes in their sport in each country. In this sense, everyone competing in Rio is a winner regardless of their medal chances. Kawanaka's parents are understandably proud just to see their daughter compete in the top tournament in the world after what is probably years of practice to get to this level. Kawanaka:

is matched in the round of 32 against Evangelia Psarra of Greece. She manages to beat Psarra 7-3 to move to the round of 16, but about 1 hour later is eliminated by Naomi Folkard of Great Britain.

The most exciting match of the session is between 16 year old Ricardo Soto from Chile:

and Anton Prilepov of Belarus:

Soto is seeded 13th after an excellent 675 points in the qualification round, but Prilepov gives him all he can handle. They tie 27-27 in the first set, Prilepov wins set 2 27-26, they tie again 27-27 in set 3 and Soto wins set 4 29-27 for a score of 4-4. In the 5th set, Soto scores 9's on his first two arrows to take a 1 point lead as Prilepov scores an 8 and a 9. Soto gets another 9 on his 3rd arrow to score 27. This means that Prilepov has to get a 10 on his final shot - and he does to tie the score at 5 points each. This brings up the seta de morte - the arrow of death. One shot for each archer - closest to the center wins. Prilepov goes first and gets a 10 right on the edge of the 9 ring. Soto calmly walks up and puts his arrow less than 3cm from the center to win the match!

Up until this point, we have mostly been watching people from the middle of the bracket that are ranked between 15 and 50. But the next match features 5th seed Atuna Das from India:

He is matched against 60th seed Jitbahadur Muktan of Nepal. He is substantially better than everyone that we've seen so far. Here is a picture of his worst round:

Das wins in three straight sets 29-26, 29-24 and 30-26. His 88 points is easily the best score seen in this session. Surprisingly, he eventually loses to Seungyun Lee from Korea in the round of 8.

The Rio zoo is quite close to the sombodromo so after the event, we decide to head over there for a little while despite the mid-day heat. We know that we need to change to Linha 2 at the Central station so it is slightly easier to walk to the Central station and just get on Linha 2 to start with rather than going back to Praça Onze, riding one stop on Linha 1 and then changing trains to Linha 2. We get back to Praça Onze station and ask one of the volunteers which way the Central station is. She gets a "why would you want to do this?" look on her face and points along a street and says that it is about a 15 minute walk in this direction. She said that we should hide our watches, rings and wallets/purses. About this time, we start to think that we should deal with the hassle of changing train lines.

We get to Central station, change lines and go two stops and then get off. This station is on an elevated platform, but we don't see anything that obviously looks like a zoo. We ask one of the volunteers who tells us to go out of the station, turn left and cross the first major street we come to. The zoo is in a park on the opposite side of the street. She also tells us to secure our possessions. At the entrance to the park, we see a sign pointing to the zoo straight ahead. But after walking for quite a while, we see almost no people and no zoo. A man comes over and asks us where we are going. When we tell him the zoo, he points us along a road to the right followed by a left. After about a mile, we start to see the zoo in the distance and realize that we're entering through a side road. We also see dozens of stray cats lounging in the grass or in the bushes. Also along this road are people selling ice cream from push carts and others renting bicycle powered vehicles.

The zoo is very inexpensive - 10 reals or $3.30/person. It also looks totally run down. As we walk around, it becomes clear that this is a circa-1960 sort of zoo with all of the animals in small cages. Here are a couple of my better pictures:

This is an Andean condor. The picture does not do justice to exactly how big this bird is. The Andean condor is the world's largest and heaviest flying bird. His wingspan is 10-11 feet and males like this one weight 24-33 lbs (that's 3.3 m and 11-15 kg for those advanced beings who understand the metric system)! The condor is native to Chile so here is a more local bird:

This is a scarlet macaw. They live in the Amazon region in northwestern Brazil. While it is likely that both of these animals have had their wings clipped, both birds are likely to be in cages, even in modern zoos. Here is an animal that should have more room to move around:

This is a brown Capuchin monkey from the Pantanal region of Brazil just to the northwest of Rio. It is tough to see intelligent animals like this one just sitting in a cage for days on end without much room to move around and little to no stimulation. Beth looks at a sign with the history of the zoo and finds that  it was started in 1888 and has gone bankrupt 3 times in it's history. Compared to a modern zoo like we visit in San Francisco, it is a little depressing to walk around. It's also a little sketchy as the back wall of the zoo backs up to a favela. After an hour or so, we head for home.

I work on pins and rest my tired legs for a little while, then we head out to dinner. Tonight, we go to a restaurant called Azteca which is supposed to serve authentic Mexican cuisine. We order and the waitress brings us two bottles. She speaks excellent English and tells us that the lighter colored one is medium spicy and the dark one is very hot. Since Sean has been known to each ghost chilies and scotch bonnets (two of the hottest chilies), he takes this as a direct challenge and puts a bunch of the medium sauce on his quesadillas and tentatively takes a bite. He says that he can hardly taste any spice so he goes to the hot sauce - same result. Our waitress has apparently been watching this drama because quickly comes over and tells us that Brazilians can hardly tolerate any spice in their food. They don't even put black pepper on the table. Despite the lack of spice, the food is very tasty and we leave happy.

Tomorrow, we are off to Men's basketball. Until then, stay tuned!

Steps for the day - 12,744

Rio 2016 - Day 3 (August 8)

Our event for the day is the B session of men's 62 kg and women's 58 kg weightlifting in Riocentro. The B session is for athletes that have lower estimated lift totals compared to all of the other athletes in the same weight category.  When the event starts, the crowds are still pretty sparse:

There are no Brazilians in this session so that might have something to do with attendance.

Weightlifting is composed of two lifts - the snatch, where you have to lift the weight directly over your head in one smooth motion, and the clean and jerk where you stop at shoulder level before lifting the weight over your head. You have to hold the weight over your head for 3 seconds under full control and there are 3 judges who decide whether a lift is good. Each athlete has 3 tries in each technique.

Based on initial start totals, there are four favorites: Yosuke Nakayama from Japan, Jesus Lopez Sanchez from Venezuela, Julio Salamanca Pineda from El Salvador and Vaipava Ioane from Samoa. All have said that they would lift a combined 280 kg in the two lifts. But like the Brazilians, we like to root for the underdog. In this match, this is 22 year old Rick Confiance from the Seychelles Islands:

All of these guys weight about the same, but Rick is taller and therefore thinner. His projected starting lift total is 222 kg.

The lifters go in order of increasing weight so Rick and and a lifter from Haiti take turns lifting their three snatch lifts before anyone even starts. Rick is successful at 100 kg and 105 kg while the Haitian lifter is successful at 102 kg and 107 kg. Rick fails at 110 kg, but the Haitian lifter hurts himself in his attempt at 112 kg and drops out of the competition. The same thing happens to a lifter from Sri Lanka a little later on so Rick works his way up another spot.

The battle to win the session is close. Salamanca Pineda and Ioane both lift 115 kg and 120 kg successfully. Nakayama lifts 121 kg on his first try:

but is not able to improve. Lopez Sanchez starts at 125 kg and fails on his first lift. But he is successful on his second attempt to take the lead going into the clean and jerk.

About this time, a woman wearing a volunteer's outfit walks up to me and asks me in several languages what nationality I am. Then she asks where I got so many pins. I tell her that this is our 12th Olympics. She is surprised and asks why I keep coming back. I tell her and she asks me would I mind being interviewed on the venue camera later in the event. I agree. Then a second woman, who is the video presenter, comes over and says that she'll give a little introduction, ask me my name and where I come from and then ask the same question the other woman just asked me.

Confiance again is the first lifter and lifts 127 kg successfully, but is unable to improve and finishes with a total of 232 kg. Nakayama lifts 140 kg and 145 kg successfully to move into first place with 266 kg. Salamanca Pineda starts by successfully lifting 150 kg and later lifts 155 kg to finish at 275 kg. Lopez Sanchez:

yells to get himself fired up as he attempts 151 kg. Unfortunately, he missed the lift and hurt himself in the process and ends up disqualified with no successful clean and jerks so Confiance moves up another spot in the standings. Then it is Ioane's turn. He starts with 156 kg:

He is also successful at 161 kg. He fails at 166 kg, but bows to the judge and crowd:

We reach the intermission between events and Sean is freaking out. He does not want to be seen on the big video screen while I'm interviewed so he leaves to get something to eat even though he is not particularly hungry. Beth wants to see the interview, but also wants to get something to eat. Eventually, she leaves me to sit there waiting. She gets back and hands me a hamburger. I eat that, but pass on the popcorn because I have this image of myself being interviewed with hunks of popcorn stuck in my teeth.

The women's event begins and it looks like I've been stood up - not that I mind at all. As in the men's event, there is one woman, Ayesha Albalooshi from the United Arab Emirates, whose entry total is 20 kg lower than the next lowest total. Nevertheless, a whole group of UAE team members have arrived to watch. One of them sees all the pins on my hat and hands me one of their team pins! Albalooshi is successful on her first lift at 67 kg:

and her fans go wild. It is tough for her because her second lift at 72 kg and her third at 77 kg are all lower than the starting weight for the next lifter. This gives her only 2 minutes between lifts. Nevertheless, she successfully lifts both weights. Just to be clear, I may say she "only" lifted 77 kg, but this is considerably more than her weight of 57 kg. All of these women are really, really strong.

The favorites in this contest, at least based on start weights, are Sabine Kusterer from Germany:

and 19 year old Mathlynn Sasser from the Marshall Islands:

At the end of the snatch, Kusterer is tied with Ukrainian lifter Veronika Ivasiuk:

at 90 kg with Sasser 3 kg back at 87 kg. You can see that Ivaskiuk is much skinnier than the other athletes in this session. That is because she is considerably taller. This gives her an advantage in the snatch because it is more based on quickness and the length of your lever arm, but will be a disadvantage in the clean and jerk.

Sean sees the interviewers coming and bugs out. The first woman who spoke with me (who is from Finland) tells me what is going to happen. She tells the presenter that the camera is live. The presenter gives a short speech about what has happened so far and then the Finnish woman motions for me to stand next to the presenter. She says "now here is someone who should win a medal for the number of Olympics" and mentions that this is my 12th Olympics. She asks me my name and where I am from. Then she asks me why I keep coming back. I told her that I love sports, but what keeps me coming back is the chance to see an athlete achieve a performance that they did not believe that they were capable of. Overall, it went okay except that the time delay between when she asked the question and when I heard it on the public address system through me off a little. After the spot was done, the presenter, who spoke excellent English, apologized and said that she should have told me about that. Then they were gone and I went back to the popcorn. Subtract 2 minutes from my 15 minutes of fame!

In the clean and jerk, Albalooshi lifts 86 kg and 90 kg, but fails at 94 kg to finish at 162 kg. Her fans give her a huge round of applause as she exits the stage. Ivaskiuk starts with a successful lift of 98 kg, but Klusterer starts with a successful lift of 108 kg and Sasser is even better at 110 kg. Sasser eventually outlifts Klusterer 112 kg to 110 kg. However, since Klusterer beat Sasser by 3 kg in the snatch, she wins the overall 200 kg to 199 kg.

Outside the venue, a group of volunteers stop me and ask to see my pins. After a bunch of trades and giving away a bunch of pins, I end up with two dated Nauru team pins and undated team pins from Singapore and Hong Kong. It is too bad that we are leaving going home relatively early in this Olympic Games because the Brazilians are definitely getting into pins!

We take the bus and train back to our hotel, drop our stuff and head out for dinner. We end up going to a contemporary Brazilian restaurant called Bazaar. We were a little worried when there was only one table full of people in the place. Sean and I both had grilled shrimp with black garlic risotto and Beth had rock lobster over a manioc puree. We asked the waiter if they could recommend a Brazilian wine for dinner. He said that he picks two reds and two whites each night for specials. Since we are eating seafood, we go with a Sauvignon Blanc from Portugal. Everything was outstanding and by the time we left, the place was full. Just another case of the Brazilians preferring to eat later.

Steps for the day - 10,678

Rio 2016 - Day 2 (August 7)

We've got an early afternoon table tennis match at Riocentro arena at the Barra de Tijuca Olympic park this afternoon so we get a little extra sleep. When we finally get down to the breakfast room, we find mostly Nigerians and Togolese. Since this is one of only a couple hotels offered to African nations, I'm trying to see how many countries are represented here.

We repeat our travel of yesterday and get to the Olympic Bus station in plenty of time. As soon as we climb the steps up to the pathway over the highway, we realize that the weather is changing. Instead of the clear, hot temperatures of yesterday, it is rapidly clouding up and the onshore wind is really starting to blow. It is blowing so hard that the metal barricades are being blown over. At one point, the wind catches my hat and away it goes. Fortunately, the walkway is surrounded by a high chain link fence and I catch up to the hat pinned against the fence instead of it flying halfway to Peru. The wind was so hard up on the walkway that Beth is physically moved several feet sideways. Volunteers are rapidly pulling down the signs and turning the barricades over to prevent damage to them and to the spectators. Once we go down the stairs on the far side of the highway, the wind calms down and we make our way to security without further issues. That is, until after we pass through security and get to where they check spectator tickets. The little card reader blinks red when we show our tickets instead of green. The ticket checker asks me to wait and finds another person who speaks English. This person explains that we are in the wrong venue - that Riocentro is about a 15 minute walk from the bus station in the opposite direction. Uh oh, now we have to get moving in order to get to our event on time.

We pass back through the wind tunnel - this time with me holding my hat instead of wearing it. We discover that there was no sign directing us at the point where we made the wrong turn and the Olympic volunteers at this location don't speak any English. Fortunately, there are a few people ahead of us that we can follow.

While the Barra Olympic park is brand new, Riocentro looks like the Olympic venue that man forgot. There is grass growing up through the concrete and a near complete lack of signage. Riocentro appears to be a sort of open air conference center with a bunch of covered buildings connected by pathway to a sort of central area. This is the venue for a bunch of the smaller sports: table tennis, weightlifting, boxing and badminton. 

Inside, the venue is quite nice. Here is the view from our seats:

I'm not so sure about these seats. It is hard to see the net for the three more distant tables because the referee is in the way. Anyway, we start with women's singles in the second round (each athlete has already won one match) of this single elimination tournament. On the table closest to us are Suthasini Sawettabut from Thailand and Li Jiao from the Netherlands. If you think that this is not the typical Dutch name, you are right. It seems like Chinese ex-patriots have populated most of the teams here. On the second table are Polina Mikhailova from the Russian Federation and Viktoria Pavlovich from Belarus. On the 3rd table are Myong Sun Ri from North Korea and Petra Lovas from Hungary and on the 4th table are Ni Xia Lian from Luxembourg and Shen Yanfei from Spain. That makes 3 Chinese exports out of 8 in matches that don't include either China or Chinese Taipei (as Taiwan is called in the Olympics). The most interesting are Li and Ni. Li is 43 and has competed for the Netherlands in the past 3 Olympics. Ni:

who Sean has taken to calling Timeless is 53. This is her 4th Olympics representing Luxembourg. Both athletes apparently moved to Europe when they found that they weren't good enough to represent China. But in fairness, both got married and raised families in Europe and have learned to speak the native languages.

Since we are closest to the Li versus Sawettabut match, I pay the most attention to that match. Sawettabut:

started fast. She is a lot quicker than Li and is always on the attack, but eventually, Li's defensive style wears her down and Li wins 4-2. Further down the line, Pavolovich beats Mikhailova 4-2 and Ri beats Lovas 4-1. The last match between Ni and Shen goes for a long time. Shen leads 3-2, but Ni comes back and wins the last two games 11-4 and 11-7 to take the match.

As each women's match ends, a men's match starts. A lot of people are interested in the match between Quadri Aruna from Nigeria and Wang Yang (yes, another Chinese athlete) representing Slovakia. First, it is unusual for Nigeria to compete in Table Tennis. The fans also seem to prefer the homegrown athletes to the imported ones. But Aruna also has a strong attacking style which was a lot of fun to watch. Aruna made the crowd happy with a quite easy 4-1 victory over Wang and got a big round of applause as he exited the arena.

While Aruna was walking out, we noticed a little Brazilian kid who had managed to score autographs from a number of the athletes:

Since there were very few spectators in the arena, I moved down to near where he was sitting to get a better view of the men playing at the nearest table to us. Once I got there, I realized that this cute kid was part of a scam. Every time he got an autograph or posed for a picture, his parents, who were sitting directly in front of me, would take the signed article, make a note of who it was, and then send him off with something new to sign. I expect that all of these autographed items will show up on auction sites in the next couple of days. In their defense, there is huge income inequality here and the poorer people really have to scramble to make a living.

The last match of the session was between Omar Assar from Egypt and, you guessed it, another Chinese transplant, Kou Lei representing Ukraine. It quickly becomes clear that the Brazilians love to root for the underdog so by mid-match, almost everyone is cheering for Omar. Sean called this the "Cult of Omar". It helped that Omar was very expressive in his play. Here is a picture:

With strong crowd backing, Omar took a 3-2 lead and I thought that he would take this match, especially since Kou looked quite discouraged every time he missed a shot. But Kou fought back and took set 6 to tie it up. Omar started out really well

in the 7th set, making a number of great shots and fist pumping every time he made a shot. He was ahead 8-4 and needed only 3 more points. But that's when the wheels fell off and Kou ended up taking 7 straight points to win the set and match. Nevertheless, the crowd gave Omar a standing ovation when he left the arena.

Outside the arena, I'm called over by a group of volunteers. Most want me to give them a pin, but a couple already have enough to trade. I'm able to score a dated NOC pin from Nauru and generic NOC pins from Singapore and Hong Kong. Typically, the volunteers are told not to wear pins or trade them - I guess because the organizing committee thinks that they won't be doing their jobs if they are trading pins. But the attraction is so strong and the amount of work that they actually have to do (other than stand for long periods of time) is so small that most workers eventually begin collecting pins. But this is a pretty good start for Day 2 and promises that this will turn out to be a good Olympics for pin traders.

It is a little after 5 pm so this is a good chance to see how the Olympic transportation system works under high load. There are certainly lines for the buses and for the Metro, but the longest we wait in any one place is about 10 minutes. For us, the transportation system is certainly passing the test!

We get back to the hotel, drop our stuff and head out for dinner. We are rapidly learning that the locals don't eat until perhaps 7-8 pm so we can eat almost anywhere without difficulty if we get to the restaurant before 6 pm. This suits us just fine. Tonight, our target is a restaurant called Nik Sushi that is about 3 blocks from our hotel. This might be the only restaurant that is not showing the Olympics on their TVs - one looks like the Brazilian version of The Voice or American Idol. The other looks like the remake of Clash of the Titans. Oh well, the food was really good. We also celebrated Sean's "official" first drink with cold sake that was served the traditional way in square wood cups.

When we got back to the hotel and were getting ready to head back to our room, I'm stopped by an older man from Togo, who asks to trade pins. His favorite sport is basketball so he takes a basketball pin and I get another dated NOC pin. Today has been a really good day!

Tomorrow, we go back to Riocentro for weightlifting. Stay tuned!

Steps - 13,594

Rio 2016 - Day 1 (August 6)

Our first day at the Olympics has us off to see women's team handball in the Future Arena in the Barra de Tijuca Olympic Park. This is the Olympic park that desperately needed the Metro 4 line to open in order to get spectators from the downtown area to this arena in the affluent SW suburbs. The game starts at 9:30 am so we are awake, showered, dressed and ready to eat breakfast when the dining area opens at 6 am. We are greeted by a elderly black man who is apparently in charge of the breakfast area. He says "Bom Dia" (sounds to me like bom geeah). When we look at him quizzically, he smiles and says "good morning, bom dia".

There is a unsweetened yogurt, juice, lots of fruit (mangoes, bananas, pineapple, guava, melon) and breads as well as what looks like some sort of pancake and quite thick slabs of bacon. We try to take anything that we can't get at home. It's all good, but it is time to go.

Rather than going to the Metro station where we bought the 7 day passes, we walk in the opposite direction toward what Beth thinks will be slightly closer 2nd stop on the Metro 4 line. She is right! During the Olympics, only people with event tickets and Metro passes are allowed to ride so we are greeted at the entrance to the station by two Olympic volunteers and two security people. We show our tickets and then let us in. We really like the design of the area where you swipe your cards:

There are a couple families on the train when we get on the train. The young kids all look at me covered with Olympic pins. This is the signal I'm waiting for and get a bunch of big smiles when I hand them a pin. Their parents all speak at least some English and they want to know about where we're from and about other Olympics.

At the end of the Metro 4 line, we walk to one end of the station, swipe our cards and almost immediately are loaded onto a waiting bus to take us to the Olympic Bus Station outside the Olympic park. I'm standing next to a very friendly guy who turns out to be an actor that worked for a number of years in New York City, but had trouble getting a lot of work because he speaks English with a heavy accent. He returned to Brazil a couple of years ago and is very happy. He wants to tell us all about Brazil - that it would be the same size as the US if we left out Alaska, that it has a very diverse population, that the housing in Barra de Tijuca is more expensive than in New York City. He says that although he is an actor, for the Olympics, he's working as a cook because, as he says, "they pay very, very well".

After about a 20 minute drive, the bus drops us at the Olympic Bus Station. One of our first criteria for whether an Olympics will be a success is transportation so this trip was one strong vote in Rio's favor. In front of us, we see what looks like a very temporary overhead walkway that passes over the highway next door and down to the Olympic park. When we finally get to the queues for security, we found that the Brazilians have an unusual way of doing them. Instead of a series of perhaps 3 or 4 very long parallel walkways with 180 degree turns at each end, the Brazilians have filled the same space with a whole bunch of very short perpendicular segments. Walking through them feels a lot like skiing - one two three steps, turn, one two three steps, turn... The only problem is that the feet holding up the railings stick far enough into the very narrow rows that the chance of tripping is high. Sure enough, a couple minutes later, a woman in front of us trips and falls. She's banged up, but seems to be okay. I am very careful with where I put my feet after that.

Security is relatively uneventful. It takes us a little bit of time to figure out which is the bag line because all of the Olympic volunteers are giving directions in Portuguese, but we finally make it into the right line. They hardly give my vest and hat a second thought as we pass through. Another short walk to where we show the volunteers our event tickets and we are into the Olympic Park. Both Beijing and London had similar parks with a lot of nearby arenas. I think that this area was originally built to be a large convention center similar to Moscone Center in San Francisco. So these venues are permanent. However, they've added a bunch more, many of which look like they will be taken down right after the Paralympics ends.

It takes us about 15 minutes to walk over to the Future arena near the far side of the Park. We have A level seats for this one and after getting wrong directions from several Olympic volunteers (no worries - it is their first day too!), we find our seats in the 3rd row at the equivalent of the 25 yard line.

Today we are going to see two matches: Brazil versus Norway and Netherlands versus France in women's team handball. For those of you that are new to this sport (that includes nearly everyone in the US!), handball is played on a slightly longer than basketball court length court. At each end are what looks like small soccer goals. The game is played with what looks like a small soccer ball. Players can dribble the ball or can run up to 3 steps after a dribble, but they can only stand still for 3 seconds before passing or dribbling. Surrounding each net is a 6 meter diameter circle. Players are trying to throw the ball into the net without stepping into the 6 meter circle.

Sometimes, players will reach the 6 meter line without any one defending them and will launch themselves into the air before trying to throw the ball past the goal keeper like this:

But more often, there is a lot of defense to the shot:

Norway is in the red and Brazil is in the yellow. Both of these teams are recent world champions and the quality of play is very high. As you can see in this picture, the Brazilians are much bigger and they have decided to play a very physical style of play against the Norwegians. We come to appreciate the play of the Norwegian pivot, 33 year old Heidi Løke. First, we just like the name because Loki is the Scandinavian mythological trickster. But we also appreciate her work. The pivot plays at the top of the 6 meter circle, directly in front of the goal keeper. Her job is to create holes in the defense that the center can use to get off a shot or to be available to take a shot if the center drops of the ball during a drive to the net. She is also responsible for guarding the opposing pivot. Here is a picture of her on offense:

She spent nearly the first half with a tissue stuffed up her nose after getting an elbow to the face early in the game, but she hung in there and was very effective.

The game was tight throughout with the lead rarely being more than 1 or 2 goals. But in the end, the Brazilians pulled away to win 31-28. In the handshake line, a lot of the Brazilians hugged Heidi making me think that they all play professional team handball together in Europe.

The second match is much less exciting. The French team, which seems to have a big influx of transplanted African athletes were more talented than the Dutch, but the Dutch played tenacious defense and were carried for most of the match by the strong play of their goal keeper Tess Wester. Team handball is very popular in Europe so both of these teams have a bunch of fans in the stands. Here are the french fans:

And of course, the dutch fans are legendary for their love of sport and for having a great time wherever they go:

But despite their efforts on defense, the French are just too strong and end up winning 18-14.

It is now 1 pm and time to get something to eat. We head over to the food area and discover that the Olympic organizers, in their desire to speed up the food lines, have created a separate line where you pay for the food, get a voucher and then go to the food lines to pick up your purchases. Unfortunately, there are not enough payment lines so there are practically no people in the food lines and humongous lines to pay. We decide to head over to the Olympic superstore to pick up some Olympic swag and hope that the lines will be better latter.

Of course, the superstore also has a huge line, but at least it seems to be moving pretty fast and after about 15 minutes, we make it into the store. Sean, who was the only one of us not wearing a hat in the midday sun, decides to get a mascot hat. The Rio 2016 mascot is named Vinicius and is supposed to be a blend of Brazilian animals. Sean likes the hat because it has ears on it and a long green tail. Beth and I get t-shirts with the sports pictograms and I head over to the pin area and showing great restraint, only buy about 12.

We head back outside and discover that the lines are still huge, but we are pretty hungry and thirsty by this time in the hot sun (about 88 degrees F) so we go through the lines and get a light meal. Unlike most of the previous Olympics, the food court does not appear to have much of anything that looks like Brazilian cuisine. There are hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, pizza and a couple forms of pasta. Disappointing!

We think about exploring the rest of the Park (there are a number of Olympic sponsor display areas in addition to the other arenas), but we are pretty cooked and decide to head for the hotel. The trip back is almost as smooth as the ride to the Park. I manage to give away a bunch more pins on the bus and train. We're still a little jet lagged so we take an afternoon nap before heading out for dinner.

Since we ate lunch late, we're not very hungry. We finally happen upon a middle eastern themed place selling falafel and shwarma wraps. Tasty and not too heavy. On our way back to the hotel, we discover a gelato place that was excellent. We'll be back here again before our time in Rio ends.

Feeling happy with our first day, we go back to our room to watch the evening's Olympic events. Unfortunately, the TV only shows low resolution video so it is a lot like watching circa 1980 TV. But there are something like 20 channels of coverage so there is no problem finding something that we want to watch. It is a little early to tell, but it appears that the Brazilians do not use NBC's formula of covering only the sports that the home team is good at. They also show the event all the way through rather than showing only the top 3-4 performances.

Tomorrow, we're off to table tennis. I apologize for the time that it is taking to get these blogs out, but our schedule has been pretty loaded so far. I hope to do better during the next week. In the meantime, stay tuned!

Steps for the day - 11,591