LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 8/04/08
MY FIRST OLYMPICS
A long time ago, I volunteered for my first Olympics. It was in Los Angeles in 1984, and as happens to people in every Olympic city, a strange magnetic attraction drew me in, though at that time I cared nothing about the Olympics, or for that matter, sports.
I was assigned to be a computer operator at the weightlifting venue. I would sit eye level with the edge of the weightlifting platform; it was the very best seat at the event being given to someone who didn't know the difference between a clean and a jerk. I was to type in the judge's marks after each lift, press 'print,' and the runners would hand deliver the printed results to coaches and officials and dignitaries. It was the first time computers had been used at the Olympics.
Our crew did constant run-throughs, over and over again for a week, the runners and ushers and guards and print people and equipment managers. We took only one break, during the Opening Ceremonies, crowding together into the printer room to watch on a small black and white television. I cannot describe the feeling of that moment. It was butterflies, showtime, planet-wide and cosmic, and much, much more; it could never be confined in words.
The emotion was so intense that during a commercial break, I left to go back into the huge auditorium. It was empty and dim. The only light came from a lamp on the weightlifting platform. In the darkness, two men struggled to carry a new platform. They were the carpenters. They had been told by an official that morning that the current platform was two inches too short, another must be built.
As they slowly and awkwardly maneuvered the thick heavy platform across the floor, one said, "Hurry! I want to watch the Olympics." The other snarled, "Fool! This IS the Olympics!"
I will never forget that moment.
There were so many other unforgettable moments. The blond flyweight Romanian gold medalist, who, when I told him my great-great grandparents were Romanian, put his gold medal around my neck, lifted me onto his shoulders and walked laughing through the crowd. The lifter from some African country who had been getting cortisone shots for his injured quadriceps, but cortisone weakens tissues over time, and as he closed in on a medal with a huge lift, I watched his quad tendon rip from his knee and the muscle roll up his thigh as both he and the weight dropped with a thud. The day Princess Ann of Great Britain came to watch, and I took a weightlifting pin from my pocket and gave it to the usher and told him to give it to her, and he did, and she pinned it to her lapel. The athlete from some small poor country who stood outside the locked iron gates, not allowed in because his country's Federation owed $600 to the Olympic Committee, and he stood outside those filigreed gates, bending his head to hide the tears he was wiping away, and someone ran inside and yelled out what was happening, and it wasn't ten minutes later that all the money had been collected from coaches and athletes and officials, and someone ran out and gave him a duffle full of cash, and someone else ran to get a weightlifting official, and the gates were opened. And when everyone saw him practice in his old worn shoes and ancient gloves with holes in them, they got him new gear, and when it was his time to compete and he made his lift after two failed attempts, all the coaches stood up and applauded. I will always remember the pride on his face.
The strangest memory; the night a befriended A.P. reporter wanted to see downtown Los Angeles, but when he wanted to go past Main Street, I said no, we would be mugged or worse, this is L. A., we can't; but he said it would be all right, and to my amazement, it was. We walked through areas I had never dared go, not even in daylight, and two thuggish looking guys walked by and smiled and waved. We walked until three a.m., and peace radiated over those grimy streets. He told me it was always like that, in every Olympic city everywhere, you never had to be afraid.
When it was over, still in my green and white Olympic uniform, I took the last volunteer's bus back to the main center. It was deserted, and the empty loneliness of the ending was unbearable. A radio was playing. The song came on, "I...had...the time of my life...and I've never felt this way before..."
For some odd reason I still can't explain, the emptiness filled. I said out loud, to it all, "Thank You." Then I walked down the block, got in my car and drove home.
Wina Sturgeon, Editor