YOG: Up and running

Things are picking up the pace here in Singapore; the games have not merely begun, but are seriously up and running. Football kicked off the start of the competition, and now we’ve had gold medals in swimming, triathlon, taekwondo, rowing, fencing and a few other events. We’ve even seen world records being smashed by an under-48kg female weightlifter.

The Youth Olympics isn’t a redundant event, as I had very much earlier disparagingly claimed. I had the idea that the age window of fifteen to eighteen years of age was ridiculously narrow, and that those aged seventeen to eighteen would, really, be better off just concentrating on the Summer Olympics – the real deal, as I’d called it. Expecting the athletes to be pale comparisons to those of the Summer Olympics, I couldn’t be convinced that these Youth Olympic Games will really function as some sort of preview for the Summer Olympics.

Now that opinion of mine is outdated.

Limits are being pushed, abilities stretched, talents highlighted, medals dealt out – and for what I thought would be a shadow of the Summer Olympics, the Youth Olympics is very, very impressive indeed.

There are performances so far that have merited the description “jaw-dropping”; the young athletes are palpably living by the Olympic motto citius altius fortius. On multiple occasions I’ve questioned myself, “Youth Olympics?” The athletes really don’t come across as still-unripe sportspersons, despite being in the process of their ripening. They’re stars in the making, vibrantly coloured flowers destined for a promisingly spectacular bloom.

I’ve been drawn to the aquatics events – swimming, to be specific. It’s been unexpectedly exciting and sufficiently tense enough for me to feel the need to cheer audibly! I particularly enjoyed last night’s finals of the men’s 200m free, women’s 100m backstroke and the women’s 4x100m medley relay not only because the competition was unbearably yet engagingly tight, but also because these three events boasted not just good swimming, but good side-stories.

Swimming as an event in general proved to have a lovely side-story: yesterday eight gold medals were given out to seven different NOCs – an accidental but excellent manifestation of the truly global nature of these Youth Olympic Games.

In the 200m free the Russian Andrei Ushakov devoured his competition (please don’t take this literally, folks) – as how he did in the heats and semis. Already deserving of huge congratulations Ushakov did something else that further cemented his position in the Parthenon of youth Olympians. Ushakov’s smiles throughout the victory ceremony were already infectiously uplifting, but most pleasant of all was the sight of his proud singing of the Russian national anthem – a rare sight amongst many other sportspeople from various backgrounds. The commentators were thrilled by his unselfconscious and appropriately channeled national pride, citing how wonderful a change it is to see “a sportsman who knows his anthem and can sing it” after seeing so many footballers appearing dumbstruck by their own national anthems.

What prompted the commentators to later declare, “The Eastern Europeans win the song contest here!” was Daryna Zevina’s similar show of Olympic decorum; the tall, lean Ukrainian (who, in the 100m backstroke final, was ahead of her seven competitors for at least 75m of the race) looked fresh-faced and radiant on the podium as she, too, sang her anthem with assurance and poise, holding the an almost beatific smile throughout. Highlighting the Slavic people’s strong tradition in music, the commentators were clearly as enthused as I was.

Despite not rooting for the Chinese in the women’s 4x100m medley relay final (the Germans were in the race, too!), I half-hoped that there had been a mistake upon seeing that the Chinese relay team had been disqualified for a changeover problem after an unstoppable performance during the four laps of the event. In the breaststroke and freestyle laps the team from China was virtually indefatigable; the Chinese constantly pulled further and further away from their competitors in the neighbouring lanes until the second-placed Australians were a whole body length behind the overwhelmingly quick Chinese team. But the grace of their acceptance of their disqualification erased my inexplicable sympathy for them and transformed it to respect; the first reaction from the Chinese relay team was to go over to the Australians and extend their congratulations, despite having to deal with the disappointment of seeing their first place confiscated by the disqualification. It was and is a wonderful display of sportsmanship and graciousness that is hard to equal.

Tomorrow I expect myself to conduct plenty of non-English conversations with high usage of non-mainstream nouns and verbs and adjectives during my twelve-hour shift. I’m looking forward to the variety and novelty it’ll bring to my interpretation job. Cheers, everyone.

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