Olympic Diary: Day 6

The day began with a rainy bike ride out to the start of the Individual Time Trial cycling event. Followed by watching cyclists start their ITTs, in the rain. To be honest it’s not really the most exciting part of a time trial to watch. Also, due to the fact that the route was a closed loop, it was tricky to get anywhere interesting to view the race. They had a large screen at the finish where you could see the cyclists en route, but the commentary was in Portuguese and the drizzle continued.

I audibled (silently to myself) and headed over to the British House where I figured they would be screening the event with English commentary due to having both Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas competing. I had, happily, figured correctly.

My personal favorite for the race was Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara, competing in his final professional season at age 35. The race was two loops of the Grumari circuit, totaling about 54km. After coming in seventh at the first time check more than 20 seconds down on the lead, Cancellara rode a phenomenal second lap to win by almost a minute. I was pleased.

The fact that I had biked the Grumari circuit myself a couple of weeks prior made the viewing experience much more compelling. For whatever the optical/technical reasons, cameras are terrible at capturing the steepness of hills and descents. So, knowing the struggle it had been to get up the steepest climb on the route, I was able to translate from the screen to my own experience. And what was happening on the screen was ridiculous.

The British House itself was a strange experience. It was, like the Canadian house, private, but overall it felt much stodgier and elitist. Perhaps this is just me projecting, but even once in the house, they seemed to have many additional rooms with separate people with clipboards guarding the entry to each, ensuring that you didn’t gain admittance without being on the correct list. However, they kind of burst their high class bubble with their prominent featuring of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Cîroc vodka at their cocktail bar. Also, the Canada House lunch makes the British House’s look pretty weak.

I returned to the Canada House that evening for an athletes celebration (specifically those athletes that had already won a medal of some sort).

The athletes’ entry was greeted by a pretty enthusiastic crowd. Once everyone was onstage (mostly comprised of the bronze medal winning women’s rugby 7s), a brief Q&A was held which I can sum up as follows:

Q: So, how does it feel?

A: Amazing.

Applause.

(Repeat)

I did get a chance to speak with the mother and grandmother of an athlete, Allison Beveridge, a track cyclist. We both agreed that cycling was great but one of those sports whose greatness can be tricky to appreciate/understand without a decent knowledge of the sport. In that sense a time trial is the most understandable distillation of the sport — whoever is fastest over the given distance wins. A road race with teams and drafting and domestiques and strategy is orders of magnitude more complex. And then there are just bizarre track events like the Madison. I’m not even sure how that one works.