Sneaking a glimpse
I was moving around the Maracana stadium during the opening ceremony when I bumped into performers dressed in Elmo-like critter costumes in a hall leading to the stands.
They had left the field a few minutes before, and with a sign warning cast members not to go into the stands, they were essentially forbidden to watch the opening ceremony that they had helped to make. Still, they seemed enchanted and proud of the ceremony; some had teary eyes. I was happy that they broke the rule and got to see a bit of the beautiful show they had helped put on.
As it turned out, it was common to see the workforce trying to sneak a peek at the Olympics. Ticket prices kept the games out of reach for working-class Brazilians, and workers at the games, well, had to work. But I saw cleaning people off to the side, trying to watch the judoka Rafaela Silva win Brazil’s first gold medal of the games.
— Sergio Pecanha
‘Greatest of All Time’
News conferences are always overstuffed with reporters and prone to zaniness when Usain Bolt is involved. Just before the games began, Bolt held a media event in Rio de Janeiro featuring bikini-clad dancers and a journalist who rapped a question. Late Thursday, after he had won the gold medal in the 200-meter dash, Bolt arrived at a news conference room and plopped into a chair between Andre De Grasse of Canada and Christophe Lemaitre of France,. Earlier, a press officer had suggested to the dozens of reporters that they play a prank on Bolt by directing questions only to the other runners.
“Usain, let’s imagine Bob Marley is alive,” a reporter eventually asked. The reporter wanted to know what Marley, a Jamaican like Bolt, would have named a song had he written one about Bolt. The crowd broke up again with laughter, but Bolt grinned and took the question in stride. “Greatest of All Time,” he said.
— Andrew Keh
When emotions catch up
Katie Ledecky was talking about Bruce Gemmell, her coach since the fall of 2012, when her voice started cracking and tears welled in her eyes. It was after her last race, the 800-meter freestyle, in which she had shattered her world record for her fifth medal, and her fourth gold.
With her Summer Games finally done, Ledecky seemed to realize that the childhood chapter of her life was also coming to a close. In a few weeks, she would be leaving home for her first year at Stanford. The magnitude of the week behind her and the year in front of her — new coast, new coach, new school, new team, new friends — appeared to overwhelm her. Silver medalist Jazmin Carlin reached over and patted her arm, as if to console her. Never mind that Ledecky had beaten Carlin; at that moment, Ledecky never looked less like a swimming machine.
— Karen Crouse
The story behind the pin
Olympic pin trading might someday become a medal sport at the games, but for now it’s a great way to meet people from different countries and take on the adventure of haggling in different languages. And really, for me, the Olympics are all about meeting people. So when a young Brazilian was determined to give me an Estonia pin for my Canada pin in the shape of a maple leaf, I had to say no. There was a story behind that pin, which I relayed to the young man. The woman who gave me the pin had said she would do so if I did a handstand. I explained that my handstand days were long past. We had a good laugh, and we worked out a deal for a New York Times pin. That made the pin more valuable to me because I had that story to tell.
I could see that the young man was disappointed, so I offered him a more bland Canada pin I had obtained earlier. He wasn’t interested, and off we went in opposite directions.
A few minutes later, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Let’s make a story.”
— Jim Luttrell