Back to Beijing

It has been a few days since my last entry, so there has been a few things occurring since then. I am now comfortably In my room in the Olympic Village again. If you missed my previous posts, I was training in Singapore with the Canadian national track and field team (for about two days – Half of the team left for Beijing on the 11th). Camp was good and the 45 minute drive to the track turned out to prepare me for sitting on buses and in taxis in Beijing. There’s a little story to that one.

At large international events, whether that be an Olympic Games or a world championship, large companies like Nike, Adidas, Budweiser, etc, have hospitality suites. Yesterday (18th), Massimo Bertochi decided to take a cab down to the Nike hospitality. It is set up inside Dang Dan Sports Center. I have no idea what the center is for, but it is currently wrapped in Nike. This is where being a sponsored athlete is really nice. Nike had a package for Nike sponsored athletes. It consisted of 3-4 t-shirts, 2-3 shorts, sunglasses, a watch, 2-3 pairs of shoes and a bag to carry it home in. I personally witnessed our decathlete receive approximately 11 pairs of shoes! It almost made me jealous, but I realized that I only have to do one event in one day, and he has to do 5 a day! And one of those events is the 1500m, poor Massimo.

The Nike hospitality suite - Dang Dan Sports Center

After sitting at Nike for about an hour, we needed to get back to the village for diner (Nike also has food services for us, but we were too late). For comparison, the cab ride to Nike took about 20-30minutes and cost about 35 yuan (Chinese dollar – about 15:1 for the USD). On the way back, I think that the driver wanted to let us see his beautiful city of Beijing. Don’t get me wrong, I want to see the city, but not from a cab window. The ride back to the village must have been 1 ½ hrs. The ride cost us 75 yuan and the driver knew that we knew he was lost. I really believe that none of the taxi drivers know this area of the city. I assume that this section of Beijing has been close to the public until the opening of the games. And a large section (the Olympic Village) is really unknown to the population.

The view from my hour cab ride

Needless to say, my knees didn’t need to be stuck in the back of the cab for that long. Luckily, our physical therapist, Mary Lou Lamy, was ready to treat me when we returned. The knees almost feel normal now.

PS - 2 days left