Olympic Matches: The Multiplicity within Athletics

FRANCE

A wide eye view of Athletics at Stade de France

“Trust me, when you see one, you’ll want to see more” she said to me on my first day in Paris. Turns out, she was right. Reminiscing on my FIFA fanning together experience in Qatar, I took the local Parisian’s advice and tried to get seats to as many Olympic events as my luck could leverage.

The various venues, energies and intensities at Athletics, boxing and football

After all, each event had a different ambiance. Juxtaposed with Athletics, Olympic action at the women’s football Quarter Finals seemed more mainstream. While he was the reason I’d gotten tickets to these track events, apparently I had to experience the organized chaos in real time myself to totally take in all the tangents he was telling me about. “These are some of the sports of antiquity, so you really must see Athletics at the Olympics” Papu urged. Originating as a sports contest in Olympia Greece 3000 years ago, taking place every four years, it acquired the name Olympic Games.

I loved the fact that there was an exhibition within the Louvre that helped to make these historical ties to the Olympics more tangible. To me, the blur between mythological beginnings, art and sport was showcased quite candidly in these creative conversations and installations.

Left: "The Finnish Discus Thrower" first place prize in Greece at the 1924 Games; Right: Milo of Croton 1671-82, took 11 years to sculpt. This famous athlete frequently won at the Olympics, but in old age as he tried to split an oak tree with his bare hands, the lion that's beginning to devour his hand serves as a symbol, a meditation on human vanity

With multiple track and field events coming to life in tandem, my attention was drawn to watching an eruption of sport in one section then shifting quickly to another burst of action elsewhere. Like hovering over a hot element, my eyes darted back and forth as if I was waiting for every popcorn kernel’s pop atop the stovetop. Clearly a noob, I sat at the edge of my seat trying to taste all the pieces. The first flavour was the women’s 1500 meter run.

Soon, there was a 400 meter dash then on the other side, long jump sprung into play. In the midst of this, suddenly someone was throwing a spear and interspersed between these bursts of Javelin, hurdles were also happening. It was like a well oiled procession which even included little cars that would transport the javelins back to home base. The coordination within the events was quite impressive and definitely an Olympic ‘should experience’.

Amidst it all, unfortunately there were several false starts for the men’s 100 meter hurdles, initiating the first disqualification for Kazakhstan’s David Yefremov.

I winced for the men who’d undergone so much training, then suddenly losing any possibility of actualizing achievement - it seemed as if opportunities simply evaporated before their eyes.

How do we digest when a dream becomes unreachable, a possibility untenable, a path no longer viable? While I wouldn’t ruminate about these mishaps as much as these men would, I suspect there are many moments that we sit somewhere in our skins and souls, when the door closed in our lives …

Then there’s the other side of the pendulum, where a one and done Javelin throw catapults you into the line up for the gold, as was the case for a few folks.

Can we pick which camp we can be in, or is it that even in spite our deepest desires and our most dedicated deliberations, Life has other (master) plans that lead us to our present permutations?

While the Egyptians looked like they were often out of bounds, many that had automatically qualified continued to hold strong. In fact, they’d continued the rigor and routine that’s built into Javelin throwing, from how to hold the spear, the wind up and the release. I was impressed at the timing of it all. On the same track, the multiplicity within the world of Athletics was being showcased. Indeed it was a step up from the complexity of some of the other Games I witnessed while meandering in Melbourne and for the South Pacific Games in the unassuming Solomon Islands. Often using the same track at the same time, different sport offered an assortment of flavours.

Since these semis, Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem (in the vid below) not only won the first Gold for his country but also set a new Olympic record at 92.97m! This left India’s Neeraj Chopra’s throw at 89.45m earning him his season’s best and the Silver. Grenada’s Anderson Peters threw 88.54m to take home the Bronze.

As for long jump, we watched the qualification rounds - that is, when you could bring your focus to the two lanes of long jumping happening in near succession. Here too, there was the age old long jump technique that includes the runway, take-off and the sandpit landing.

While Paris 2024 has been “the first Olympics in history to achieve numerical gender parity on the field of play”, unfortunately some bans remained in play only for those in country and not for non-French participants.

Soaking this all in has been more than I imagined! Luckily, getting to the games and venues has been simple and efficient. Accommodating up to 80k people, the country’s largest stadium the Stade de France has transformed itself and the community around it for the occasion.

From metro to my morning coffee, getting settled into the Stade de France was actually smooth sailing

The early morning metro ride and walk was met with coffee just outside the mouth of the stadium - a perfectly timed treat to jumpstart the multiplicity of Athletics on tap at the Olympics!

I still can’t imagine that there was 80k of us gathered under one roof to watch it all

May we unite in ease and joy - regardless of all the action that’s happening (and distracting us) daily,