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