The Olympic Games are like the best of novels. You know what page they start on and what page they end — but you have little idea of what will happen in between.
The drama. The history. The circumstance. The twists and unexpected turns. One minute Ben Johnson is a hero for the ages. The next minute, a national disgrace. Hyperbole rules the day. One minute Simon Whitfield is an unknown. The next a household name.
It can be that great and surprising and harsh and terrific all at once.
The magnificent sprinter, Andre De Grasse, would not tell me this is his last Olympic Games. But I can tell you: This is my last. This will be my eighth and final Summer Games. My 18th Olympic assignment overall.
And for those who go, train, compete, coach, cover, these are once-in-a-lifetime experiences with places you couldn’t invent; circumstances that brought tears to winners and losers, each of their stories so personal, their accomplishments so varied.
The Olympics, for me, have always been about making memories. Some of them sporting. Some of them personal. Here are a few that stay with me — written in Sunday column style.
THE OPENING OF ALL OPENINGS
The Atlanta Olympics of 1996 were something of a logistical disaster. A bomb went off in Centennial Park. Chaos was part of almost every day. The buses didn’t work and when they did sometimes they took you to the wrong venue No one knew where to go or how to get there most days.
But the opening was all but perfect. There stood Muhammad Ali, the Greatest, his left hand shaking uncontrollably, holding the Olympic flame with his right. Alone in front of the world.
A stadium near silent. When Ali lit the flame, the crowd exploded. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
It was the perfect opening to a most imperfect Games.
THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA
“Wake up!” the late Christie Blatchford shouted, banging on my dorm room door just after midnight. “There’s a been a bomb.”
I don’t remember how we got to Centennial Park the night of the Olympic bombing. I do remember being with colleague Steve Buffery and the great Blatchford on our way to cover the shocking events, which years later would be central to the plot of a Hollywood movie.
I do remember getting to the Park, people everywhere, police everywhere, still lots of screaming and confusion, so many of us interviewing anyone they could find who would say anything — and dictating over the cell phone to newspaper desks right on deadline.
We worked to our 2 a.m. deadline in Toronto and then with papers in Alberta we continued to work until 4 am.
Somehow, with the subway overcrowded or possibly closed, with no cabs to be found, Buffery and I made our way back to Clark Atlanta University, our rather humble home for the Games. We got some sleep and not a lot and made our way back the Main Press Centre the next morning.
It was then we found Blatchford, who had worked all night, outworked all of us, asleep on the floor of the MPC. That night made history – the next night would make Canadian history.
THE FIRST DONOVAN GOLD
In the morning, they weren’t sure there would be any Olympics at night. There was talk of postponing the Games because of the bomb. Donovan Bailey didn’t know until afternoon that he would be running the 100 later that night. He tried, best as he could, to relax throughout the afternoon. And a few hours before midnight, some 22 hours after the bomb went off at Centennial Park, Bailey established himself as one of the great Canadian Olympians in history, winning the 100 metres in world record time. He would follow that up one Saturday later by winning his second gold medal as part of the Canadian 4X100 relay team. That’s 28 years ago: How does that still seem like yesterday?
QUICK OLYMPIC HITS
Purely from the gut. Favourite Summer Games: Sydney Australia, 2000; Least favourite: Atlanta … Favourite Olympic athlete: Usain Bolt, 100, 200 and relay champion in three straight Olympics from 2008-2016. He would have nine gold medals if not for a teammate’s relay disqualification for performance enhancing drugs … Favourite Canadian athlete: Donovan Bailey … Most impressive Canadian athlete who didn’t win a medal, Steve Nash, 2000 … Best Canadian teams: Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle, rowing; Daniel Nestor and Sebastien Lareau, tennis; Canada’s 4X100 relay team in Atlanta; Team Canada, men’s basketball, 1984 … Best dunk: Vince Carter, Team USA, 2000 … Unforgettable Canadian gold medal winner, Mark Tewksbury, 1992…Favourite Canadian athlete to deal with, medal winner: Curt Harnett 1984 … Best Olympic host: Brian Williams; Favourite Canadian comeback story, Silken Laumann … Toughest Canadians men and women, Mike Strange, boxing; Emilie Heymans, diving … Sports that should always be in the Summer Games; baseball and softball. Olympic sports I can do without: Equestrian, modern pentathlon, 3X3 basketball; breaking, surfing … Most stunning Olympian: Clara Hughes, who won medals in both the Winter and Summer Olympics, the only Canadian athlete to do so. Hayley Wickenheiser played softball in the Olympics but never won a Summer medal.
THE GOLD MEDAL EVERYBODY MISSED
We tried to find a night to have dinner at a famous restaurant called The Black Whale during the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. We thought we had it all figured out.There was only one event going on that evening and it was modern rhythmic gymnastics, and really, who was going to have to cover that?
In those days, before cell phones and texting, there was an Olympic computer in the lobby of our hotel, the only one in which you could check results of any event at any time of the day. Just before our group headed out for dinner, we checked the computer one last time.
There were no Canadian athletes listed on the leader board. In first place was L. Fung, China.
Lori Fung went on to win gold that night with a large portion of media dining out on roast beef. Lori was from Vancouver. Somehow the computer had her country listed incorrectly.
When we returned to our hotel rooms that night, the red message light was flashing impatiently. The screaming message was: “Lori Fung won gold tonight. Where are you? Where is our story.”
Deadline had passed. There was no story. The next day, many of us, embarrassed, followed up the Fung victory, feeling great about our night out, not so great about the circumstances surrounding it.
KNOCKED OUT
I got sent to my first Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984, ostensibly because I covered boxing for the Calgary Herald and two of Canada’s best Olympic hopefuls were boxers Willie de Wit and Shawn O’Sullivan. How big were they back then? As Canadians, they made the cover of Sports Illustrated, at a time when the cover meant something in a pre-Olympic edition. Both were expected to win gold. Neither de Wit nor O’Sullivan boxed particularly well in their gold medal matches, de Wit losing to Henry Tillman, O’Sullivan losing to Frank Tate. Somehow I blamed myself for their defeats. Canada was winning medals all over those boycotted Olympics, except where I was assigned.
Everywhere I went Canadians seemed to lose.
I watched Lennox Lewis lose an early round match to Tyrell Biggs and after that covered the de Wit and O’Sullivan endings. In fairness, Lewis came back four years later winning gold against Riddick Bowe. I was home watching on TV. I wasn’t assigned to the ’88 Games in Seoul. Anything important happen there?
BEST PLACE TO WATCH OLYMPICS
Covering the Olympics is lot like being caught in a giant airport terminal, with no gate numbers and the feeling that something is happening somewhere – but you’re not sure what or where.
The best place to watch an Olympics — not unlike watching a golf tournament — is on television. Especially Canadian television who have mastered the Olympic broadcast experience for years.
I counted that 28 gold medals had been won by Canadians in the seven previous Summer Olympics I’ve covered. I think I was there for eight of those wins. And missing from 20 others.
Sometimes timing just doesn’t work for you. I was covering the Canadian flag bearer, Caroline Brunet, the great canoeist on the final day of the spectacular Olympics in Sydney and the choppy waters didn’t work in her favour. Meanwhile, across town Daniel Igali was winning gold in wrestling. You hope to be right place right time. Often, it doesn’t work that way.
I was miles away when Rosie MacLennan won her first gold in trampoline. And I was there for Penny Oleksiak’s first gold and Olympic medal, and for the underrated near perfect performance by Derek Drouin in high jump in Brazil. And sometimes, you get the best stories the day after, or the day before, when an athlete opens up the way Simon Whitfield or Adam van Koeverden did.
WATCHING THE UNBELIEVABLE BE REAL
Sometimes you have to be there, sitting close to the finish line, just to believe what it is you are witnessing. And sometimes, in that kind of moment, an athlete, an event, a performance can take your breath away and leave an impression with you forever. Usain Bolt did that in running the signature event of any Summer Games, the 100 metres, in Beijing in world record time of 9.69. That was in 2008. The only person to run faster than that since — Bolt himself, one year later, in Germany in 9.57. That was 15 years ago. In the 15 years prior to Bolt’s record run, the world mark was broken seven times. Bolt also holds the world record in the 200 metres.
WORST ASSIGNMENTS CAN BE BEST STORIES
In 1996, I was assigned to cover the cycling road race, one of the longest and hardest events of the Games. Steve Bauer, who had won a medal in Los Angeles, and was a regular at the Tour de France, was racing for the final time an an Olympian. That was supposed to be the story.
It was boiling hot in Atlanta that day and impossible to factor how anyone could possibly ride 273 kilometres in that kind of heat. The race began and Bauer all but disappeared behind the field. And I thought to myself: What kind of story is this going to be?
Then Olympic magic happened. Bauer, way back in 41st place, and nowhere near the podium or the interview room, began his ride towards the finish line where many of his competitors were still on their bikes waiting for final competitors to complete the race.
And suddenly, the noise started, the cyclists, some sitting on their bikes, some standing beside them began applauding and the applause grew louder and louder as Bauer got closer to the finish line. This was his sport and its athletes saying goodbye and thanks to Bauer for a terrific career. These were his friends, his colleagues, those he raced against all paying tribute. A soaked and exhausted Bauer was the 41st cyclist to cross the line that day: He barely smiled, waved, then burst into tears. I had my story. I haven’t stopped telling it for 28 years.
BEST CLOSING CEREMONY
I have passed on a lot of Closing Ceremonies in the past, mostly because by the end of the Games, you’re pretty much spent. You just want to go home. But Los Angeles was my first and in retrospect, happy I didn’t miss it.
The great memory of that night was Lionel Ritchie signing ‘All Night Long’ and the athletes of the world, unrehearsed, began dancing together all over the field at Memorial Coliseum, country with country, athlete with athlete. It was the kind of scene — like so much about the Olympics — that stays with you forever.