You couldn't help but pay special attention to the U.S. team, which somehow played its way into the gold-medal game. That's the Olympics, though. You can be simultaneously awed by the athletic achievement and inspired by the personal stories. If you don't walk out of here, Kevin, having felt chills go down your spine from some "Olympic moment," then I think the smog might've gone straight to your head.
KVV: As you know, Maese, it's hard to truly enjoy events when you're writing about them, especially when there is a tight deadline involved. You just want to be accurate, fast and eloquent. So when Jason Lezak reeled in Alain Bernard in the 400 freestyle relay, or when Phelps out-touched Milorad Cavic by .01 of a second to win the 100 butterfly, my hands were shaking - but I didn't really get chills. I was just stressed.
I did have one Olympic moment, though, that I'll remember forever. The one night there were no preliminaries to cover at the Water Cube, some friends and I wandered over to the Bird's Nest to watch Usain Bolt in the 100-meter track final. We weren't journalists that night; we were just fans. It was humid, we were sweaty, crammed into tiny seats, and the beer we purchased tasted like warm spit. We were all cranky and, in some sense, wishing we were in bed. Or at the bar.
Then Bolt exploded from the starting blocks. I've seen a lot of amazing feats as a sportswriter, but few have ever blown me away like Bolt's world record. When he started celebrating with 30 meters to go, slapping his chest and extending his arms, it was electric. I realized I would have waited three hours for that moment. On the walk home, I got a big laugh by running down the street, arms extended, thumping my chest. Later, I realized little kids all over Jamaica were running barefoot down dirt roads, extending their arms and doing the same thing I was: dreaming of being the fastest man in the world.
RM: It's funny how these moments sneak up on you. I was watching weightlifting one day with one eye tuned to the actual competition and the other studying the rules. Pardon the cheesy admission, but I was blindsided by Olympic spirit. And it had nothing to do with a gold medal.
Michaela Breeze was her name, a 29-year-old lifter from Great Britain. She had hurt her back a couple of weeks earlier and knew she had no business being there. As the only lifter representing her country, she felt she had no choice. "It's the Olympics," was her explanation. She was attempting lifts the other competitors could do with one arm. Still, she left the platform in pain on her second snatch lift and didn't come out for her third. We thought she was done.
