Feb 20
Despite the geopolitics, the host nations’ human rights record, the circus around Kamila Valieva, the spot Peng Shaui competitions, the fake snow, the arid landscapes, Covid restrictions and the whole ROC farce the Beijing Winter Olympics was well watched in our house.
Please click for moreMy American colleagues are forever mocking me for the amount of national holidays we get in Bermuda. We take the British ones, the American ones, have plenty ourselves and the island’s government are not immune to inventing the random one for good measure.
Nonetheless days off are not to be sniffed at, and we have one today to celebrate Bermuda’s first ever Olympic gold medal won by triathlete Flora Duffy in Tokyo. 🏊♀️🚴♀️🏃🏼♀️🥇
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Flora Duffy won Bermuda’s first ever Olympic gold medal tonight in Tokyo, finishing the Triathlon a minute and 14 seconds ahead of GB’s Georgia Taylor-Brown in very wet conditions to send this tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean into raptures.
Please click for moreIt is the longest wait for an Olympic opening ceremony in history, but tomorrow morning my time the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that never looked like happening finally opens.
A year late and stymied by all the regular hosting city controversies of construction, corruption, dodgy resignations of officials and even logo arguments, last year the Tokyo Olympics was taken down by the biggest disease of all.
Read moreThere have been a lot of very fit looking people mixing with many slightly larger cruise ship tourists walking around Hamilton these last few days. The antithesis is breathtaking, or out of breath depending on which one they were.
54 men and 47 women will take part in Saturday’s World Triathlon Series, the second in the season’s calendar. Last year was the first time Bermuda had been a host for the ITU’s World Series, and homecoming queen Flora Duffy swept to victory to much delight.
The skeleton. Who an earth invented that? Superb from Lizzy Yarnold, who is from a family of Addicks, to claim back to back Olympic gold medals in the skeleton, basically lying on a metal tray with your nose an inch from a frozen downhill ravine travelling at 80 mph. How a girl from Sevenoaks picks that as a career I will never know.
Yarnold is brilliant in front of the camera. Inspirational, self-deprecating and funny, and the country smiled with her yesterday as she smashed the course record at the sliding centre at Pyeongchang to grab gold as teammate Laura Deas won bronze in what was the most successful day ever for GB at a Winter Olympics.
I’m enjoying the Winter Olympics and the shear youth and exhilaration of it all. Although I view summer Olympians with massive admiration and reverence, I truly marvel at these young men and women hurtling down mountain sides and iced tunnels at break neck speed.
Pyeongchang, which looks a pretty awe-inspiring location for the Games, is 13 hours ahead of Bermuda but between NBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) we are keeping up with events even if I’m never sure whether we are watching them in real time or on repeat.
As I sit here in my pyjamas with a beer with far too long to wait until midnight I feel content that I don’t have to go out and pretend tonight will be the best night of my life. Movies are downloading, my daughter sits at my feet and we have a fridge full of snacks. Good enough for me.
I turned 50 this year and we spent a couple of memorable weeks in Rio at the Olympics to celebrate it, although I’ll be honest I’ve struggled moving into the next decade of my life. Not physically, I feel good and I think I look alright but it has made me very introspective and I question myself a lot, especially when I wake in the middle of the night, which happens more and more. Must be old age and my eyes are going and my ears are getting bigger as well….
My 2016 had its challenges. Personally and professionally. Questions without answers. Vacillant sometimes, headstrong other times.
Charlton are no longer an escape for me or sadly for the majority of us. I never ever thought my love for them would wane, but incredibly it has and it breaks my heart.
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We left Rio de Janeiro on Friday and took the day flight to Miami and have since very late Friday night been in Sarasota, which meant a late night drive across Alligator Alley.
As the games closed tonight Rio and the Cariocas managed to pull off the 31st Olympic Games, and it was an unforgettable experience to be apart of it for 10 days. Rio has its issues and they are too big to sweep under the rug and ignore, yet the city and it’s people put on a happy and beautiful show for the world. They have an expression, the Brazilians, fique tranquilo, which means basically not to stress about stuff, because it will work itself out. Well Rio 2016 did.
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Our final day in Rio and we ended with a day at the Olympic Stadium watching some athletics. The Olympic Stadium moniker is only being used for the duration of the Games, the real name is the Nilton Santos Stadium, or more fondly known as the Engenhão, and was built for the 2007 Pan American Games and is home to my adopted team Botafogo.
The journey from Barra to Enganhao de Dentro was pretty painful, and eye-opening, and for the first time pretty disorganized. We were met by massive queues when we reached the stadium an hour later than we hoped, but not for the first time our 6-year bebê came in handy with line jumping as preference is given to kids.
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Women’s 10m diving today. The 2007 built, but slightly crumbling, Maria Lenk Aquatics Center has already hosted some of the earlier water polo and is running with the synchronized swimming as well, get your nose pegs ready for that, but diving is the arena’s main pull with just the men and women’s 10m platform left.
28 women, some young enough looking to be in primary school, took part in qualification today each committing 5 dives, each one different and the 18 divers with the highest score progressed to tomorrow morning’s semi-final. The best 12 then take part in the final later tomorrow.
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Trot on. Not my normal sporting activity although I do like the gee gees, but this was slightly different watching the Equestrian team and individual jumping qualification today.
We made our way out to Deodoro, where Brazil’s National Equestrian Centre already existed and an impressive sight it was. The 32,500 seater outdoor arena was built for the 2007 Pan American Games and forms part of the Deodoro cluster of Rio 2016 stadia which includes a mountain bike and BMX track, the modern pentathlon park, where the rugby was held last week as well as the field hockey plus somewhere there was a whitewater rafting and canoe slalom course. I’d like to have seen that.
Nonetheless 4 hours sat in the beating hot sun watching the horses trot around was quite enough. I can’t imagine how hot Rio can get on a warm Summer’s day, but today was toasty and even the beer did not help with my hydration.
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Today was our one day with no tickets for any events, so we decided to cram a visit to the two largest tourist sites in the city into one day, which in hindsight was a bit of an ask.
The first challenge was transport. You can only travel on the BRT and Metro if you have a valid Olympic ticket for that day of competition, we didn’t so we had to cab it around and although not expensive, Rio’s traffic is atrocious. It took an hour to get from our apartment in Barra to Corcovado, where where we met the cog train to ascend 20 minutes up a side of a mountain to see up close the Christ of the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor) statue.
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A cross between basketball and rugby but played on water, I saw a little bit of water polo when I was younger as I had a good mate who played to national standard and I used to go and watch him occasionally. Water polo is a tough sport and it is plenty physical and what goes on under the water is best not seen!
There are 4 periods of 8 minutes with time outs and sin bins used to stop serial eye gouging. The Olympic men’s water polo is still in the group stage and we saw three games today at the Aquatic Centre, where the night before Michael Phelps signed off with his 23rd gold medal.
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I got a lot of grief indoors for getting Beach Volleyball tickets and I have had all the jokes about budgie smugglers and only going for the thongs. Well, let me tell you thongs were very much on show, but the blokes, thankfully, took to the sand pit dressed like they were going for a paddle at Margate .
We lucked out that our session’s first game today at the very impressive temporary Copacabana Beach Arena was Brazil’s men against Spain’s men. World v European champions, and a very, very partisan 10,000 crowd made the day such a memorable experience. The atmosphere was a cross between a hyped up NBA play-off game with added DJ help and dance routines and a high energy Brazilian football match at the Maracana.
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Chicago Addick 