Long-time readers of these blogs will know that one of the big draws of the Olympics for me is the opportunity to see an athlete produce a top performance under all of the pressure that comes with being in the Olympics, and that they did not believe they were capable of. So far, we have seen mostly team events so there were relatively few opportunities for these kinds of break-out performances. But tonight, we have one of our favorite events: athletics (track & field to many people) and based on past history, we should have a chance to see some of these performances. Since Beth has the same amount of melanin as Snow White, we are going to an evening event that starts at 7:00pm. That leaves us the rest of the day to do something, and Beth has purchased tickets to visit the Musée D’Orsay – currently the 6th most visited art museum in the world.
Musée D’Orsay started life as the Gare D’Orsay at the beginning of the 20th century and was the main railway station for all routes headed toward south-western France. By 1939, the station’s platforms had become unusable for the longer trains coming into service and by 1970 a new Gare had been built under the Gare D’Orsay. The old station was threatened with destruction. Fortunately, the Museum of France proposed the formation of an art museum that would bridge the gap between the Louvre, which exhibits antiquities and the newly built Centre Pompidou which was ultra-modern. This idea was accepted by then-President George Pompidou and the museum finally opened in 1986 showing primarily French art from after the Revolution (1848) and 1914. Walking into the museum, you can immediately see that it was a train station:
Sean
heads off to view an exhibit on the architecture of modern Paris. While Beth
and I are trying to decide what to see, a couple come up to me and ask to trade
pins. They have produced their own pin that copies the Fabulous Las Vegas sign,
where they are from, except that it says Bienvenue (welcome) Paris. I’m
thinking that there must be some copyrighted material here that they didn’t
think twice about using, so I tell them that I’m not interested in their pin,
but I give them one from my giveaway pocket.
We headed off to the gallery showing most of their Impressionist paintings. The first thing we see is a long line. It is not clear what this line is for but thinking that it is the line to get into the gallery, we get in line. When we get closer, we realize that the view out of the outward facing clock was used in the Opening Ceremonies:
You
can see the Seine, the Olympic flame balloon, the Tuileries Garden and the Sacré-Cœur
in the background. Okay, I can see why everyone wants this picture although I’m
probably zoomed in too much.
Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Impressionist gallery:
I have wanted to see Van Gogh’s Stary Night, but there is a sign where it normally hangs to indicate that it is currently on exhibit in Arles – if I’d only known! Here are some of the other pieces of art that we liked:
This is really a spectacular museum, and we really enjoyed
our stay, but it is time to head to Stade de France for our Athletics session.
We
get to the stadium a little faster than the crowd and have some time to walk
around. All of the restaurants on the same street are packed with people either
getting in their pregame meals or getting ready to watch the events on TV while
consuming mass amounts of alcohol.
We’ve got really good seats again:
Women’s
long jump will be contested tonight and we’re either going to be along the run
in or near the pit depending on which way the competitors are going. Men’s
javelin and the women’s shot-put part of the heptathlon are off to our left and
most of the track events (women’s 1500 m semifinals, men’s 200 m, women’s 400 m
hurdles, men’s 110 m hurdles and the 200 m part of women’s heptathlon) will
start/end across the field from us. While we are waiting for things to get
going, we go to get something to eat and drink. Here I make a mistake. I’ve
found the chicken curry baguettes to be quite good, so I decide to be somewhat
healthier by going for a vegetarian curry sandwich. It looks good, but when I
start eating, I discover that rather than being a sandwich full of vegetables
cooked in a curry sauce, I get an imitation chicken curry sandwich with some
sort of vegetarian chicken substitute. As the French would say: Il n’est pas très bien (it is not good!)
Back at our seats, we find that we are very close to the start of the in run for the women’s long jump so everyone is working on setting the markers for where they should start their in run to hit the takeoff board cleanly (toes not over the takeoff board). An athletics event is a little bit of a 3-ring circus with a bunch of stuff going on at the same time. The long jumpers and the heptathletes come in first and begin warming up. Here is a picture:
There are two shot-put throwing rings in the background with a runway for the javelin in-between. After everyone has finished their long jump warmups, they have to get out of the way because the women’s 1500 m run is starting in almost the same place. Here are some pictures from this event:
I
like this last picture because out of the 17 shoes in the picture, only 2.5 of
them are on the ground. Maybe that’s why these women are flying around the
track! It takes the fastest ones less than 4 minutes to complete the race. In
the first semifinal, Faith Kipyegon from Kenya is the fastest qualifier with
Laura Muir from Great Britain and Elle St. Pierre from the US right behind. I’m
excited to see that Klaudia Kazimierska from Poland qualified with a personal
best of 4:00.21 minutes and even more excited to see that while she did not
qualify for the finals, Maia Ramsden from New Zealand ran 4:02.20 minutes. That
was both a personal best and also the fastest time ever run by a New Zealand
woman! It is too bad that these moments are often lost in the focus for who
wins each race. In the second semifinal, Diribe Welteji from Ethiopia won in
3:55.10 minutes; a little over 3 minutes faster than Faith won the first race.
Jessica Hull from Australia and Nikki Hiltz from the US finished 2-3. But Susan
Lokayo Ejore from Kenya, Revee Walcott-Nolan from Great Britain, Salome Afonso
from Portugal all ran personal bests and Agathe Guillimot from France, Weronika
Lizakowska from Poland, Marta Perez of Spain and Sintayehu Vissa of Italy all
ran personal bests and set national records!
While
this had been going on, the heptathletes had been competing in the shot-put. We
couldn’t see very well, but Nafissatou Thiam, who we’ve watched in Rio and who
is competing in her 3rd Olympics, won with a throw of 15.54 m worth
892 points. If you think that this doesn’t sound very far, try throwing a
bowling ball 51 feet!
With the 1500 m out of the way, the long jumpers
are back out to start their competition. Here are some of the pictures:
Each woman goes through a similar routine. First, they get the crowd fired up. Then they previsualize their jump. Then off they go. They are jumping into a slight headwind so there will be no personal bests or national records here. As it turns out, Tara Davis-Woodhall of the US wins the event on her second jump of 7.05 m although she improved to 7.10 m two jumps later. Malaika Mihambo of Germany takes the silver with a jump of 6.98 m and Jasmine Moore of the US takes the bronze with a jump of 6.96 m.
While the long jump was going on in the foreground, the men’s javelin was going on in the background. The big favorite in this event was Neeraj Chopra from India. But that is not how it turned out. On his second throw, Arshad Nadeem from Pakistan set an Olympic record of 92.95 m (305 ft). This was a personal best by more than 2.5 m and the 6th longest throw of all time if you only count the best throw for each athlete. He was clearly stunned after the distance was announced – exactly the kind of reaction I am always looking for! Chopra on the other hand, was having a pretty bad day. He fouled on 5 of his 6 throws, but his one good throw was very good, 89.45 m to win the silver medal and Anderson Peters of Grenada threw 88.54 m to win the bronze medal. Here are some pictures:
Next
up was the men’s 200 m final. I don’t have any pictures because the start was at
the far end of our side of the track and the finish was on the other side.
Everyone expected that Noah Lyles of the US would win, but everyone (including
his fellow athletes) didn’t know that Noah had contracted COVID-19 the day
before. Somehow, he managed to finish 3rd in a time of 19.70 seconds
anyway. But we are very happy when Letsile Tebogo of Botswana wins in a time of
19.46 seconds to become the first Botswanan to win a gold medal in any sport.
Kenny Bednarak of the US wins the silver medal in 19.62 seconds.
The 200 m part of the heptathlon is next. They are starting and stopping at the same place as the men’s 200 m, but this time, I get a picture:
The
woman in front is Katarina Johnson-Thompson from Great Britain. She finished in
23.44 seconds, which was worth 1035 points, the highest total earned in the
three 200 m heats.
We have two hurdle races to end the evening. The first one is the women’s 400 m hurdles. This was expected to be a head-to-head race between Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the US and Femke Bol from the Netherlands. The great thing about this race is that they go all the way along the track, so we get a good view from our corner. Here are some pictures:
You
can see how far ahead Sydney was near the end of the race. She set a new world
record time of 50.37 seconds and probably could have lowered that time if she
had not been ahead by 1.5 seconds! After the race, her family gave her a tiara
because she is the queen. Second was Anna Cockrell in a personal best time of
51.87 seconds. Bol took the bronze medal in a time of 52.15 seconds. She must
have been devastated to lose by so much, but still appreciated all the support
she has received from the Dutch fans.
The final event was the men’s 110 m hurdles.
The favorite was American Grant Holloway, but Holloway was also the favorite in
Tokyo and finished second to Jamaican Hansle Parchment. Parchment is back in
this race and is probably the second favorite. But from the start, Grant
dominates and wins in a time of 12.99 seconds. Daniel Roberts of the US is
second in 13.085 seconds beating Rasheed Broadbell of Jamaica by 0.003 seconds.
Here are some pictures:
What
a great evening! We head toward the RER B station as we did for rugby sevens
and got stuck in the same crowd. This time, we stay in the RER B line. We have
a nice conversation with a family of 4 from Dublin (Ireland) who are attending
their first Olympics and would like to know what our favorite was. We tell them
that Lillehammer was our favorite Olympics because it was the only time where
you dump 200,000 Olympic tourists in a town of 15,000 and surround everyone
with the awesome Norwegian sports fans who root very hard for their own
athletes but also really appreciate outstanding athletic performances by anyone
else.
We finally get up to the platform and just as I’m getting in the train, a SNCF employee runs up and wants to trade pins. He points to a pin and just as the doors are closing, he hands me the Inoui pin (an advertisement for the SNCF TGV high speed train) that he wears on his uniform. It isn’t a pin that I collect, but this is the kind of experience that I hope for when I wear all of these pins! It has been a good day! Steps for the day: 15,292.
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