Beijing's Olympic memories should help win 2022 Games
- By Mark Dreyer
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 22, 2015
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A night running activity with the theme of "Supporting Winter Olympics, inspiringice passion" was held in the north square of China Millennium Monument and Yuyuantan Park in Beijing on the evening of July 13. |
London had the stamps, Vancouver the red mittens - and Beijing had the volunteers.
That might be among the more unexpected opening sentences of articles in the sports sections, but those are some of the memories I have from covering three consecutive Olympic Games from 2008 to 2012.
As a dual citizen of both the U.K. and Canada, living in Beijing, I had the unique experience of covering three "home" Olympics in a row. Each was unforgettable in its own way, but certain differences emerged.
First, some background.
As a football reporter who had covered golf, tennis and a few other sports as well, I had never been to an Olympics, but it was among the top highlights of TV sporting events in my childhood. Growing up in the U.K., the first Olympic memories came from ice skating duo Torvill and Dean in 1984, back in the days when both Summer and Winter Games happened in the same year.
The year 1988 saw Ben Johnson disgraced in Seoul, starting an ugly sequence in the world of drug-tarnished elite sprinters that has lasted to this day. Barcelona 1992 saw the return of South Africa to the international fold, the USA's first Dream Team and a limping Derek Redmond, while the Winter Games that year saw more medals for Italian skier Alberto Tomba, or Tomba la Bomba as he was known.
Bombs of another sort marred Atlanta 1996, changing the face of Olympic security forever. Sydney 2000 saw Cathy Freeman celebrate with both the Australian and the Aboriginal flag - a violation of protocol that was fortunately overlooked. The bribery scandal in the awarding of the 2002 Olympics to Salt Lake City led to major reforms in the IOC, while the Games themselves will be remembered for some dubious judging in the figure skating.
The unfinished stadia in Athens in 2004 drew the attention of the world's media, as did the bizarre sight of an Irish priest attacking a Brazilian athlete in the final stretches of the marathon. Meanwhile, Liu Xiang won China's first ever track gold, equaling the world record in the process, a high water mark he was never able to revisit.
And so we came to 2008, China's coming out party to the world.
The opening ceremony was simultaneously a safe and impressive affair. Safe in the fact that the fireworks sequences had clearly been recorded earlier in the week in case anything went wrong on the night, and were awkwardly edited into the live show by an overzealous director; but impressive, with impeccable detail on a grand scale that perhaps only North Korea's Mass Games could match.
The world was suitably wowed.
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