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
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