RIO de Janeiro, what can I say? You well and truly sucked me in and spat we out with lifelong memories and experiences I will cherish for the rest of my life, my two-week whirlwind experience that was the Olympic Games.
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Heading over to the Olympics, with two of my best mates, Josh and Macca, I didn’t really know what to expect, except more live sport than I have ever experienced in my life.
But what I actually experienced was much more, as you will find out first hand below, in my two week recap.
THE SPORT
Originally, the three of us booked tickets to go to the 31st Olympiad because our good mate Tristan White was selected to attend his first Olympics as part of the Australian men’s hockey team.
But as beautiful as sport can be, it can also be very cruel, as Tristan was ruled out weeks after being announced in the team, after tearing his PCL at training.
None the less, we didn’t let this stop us from having fun and attending as many sports events as we could humanly handle.
As the photos and videos suggest, in just 14 days, we saw eight games of hockey, eight games of beach volleyball, weightlifting, a night at the swimming, four games of rugby sevens, two games of European handball, two massive sessions of athletics, triathlon and most importantly, the Boomers vs Dream Team basketball game.
The highlights? I don’t know where to start!
I’ll start with a massive bucket list item for me, the Boomers match.
As soon as we booked our airfares over there, the first tickets I wanted to ensure I had was this match.
Growing up a hoops junky, I’ve always dreamed of watching the Dream Team and to watch them play against the best our country has to offer was incredible.
The presence the American players had as they entered the stadium was straight out of a movie.
The stars ran of the court and the whole stadium cheered at the top of their lungs, a moment I will never forget.
To top it off, our Boomers pushed the eventual gold medalists all the way and showed why we are a basketball nation on the rise.
A close second would have to be watching Australian swimmer Kyle Chalmers (18) win gold for Australia in the 100m swim.
Real spine tingling stuff.
While on the topic of deafening atmosphere, the biggest individual cheer at the Games was whenever Usain Bolt entered the arena.
I got to watch him run not once but twice, which was everything I had hoped for.
He is so much quicker and taller than all his opponents, watching him on television doesn’t do it justice.
Other superstars I got to watch live included three time Olympic gold medal beach volleyballer Kerri Walsh Jennings, my mate Ryan Gregson, who became the first Australian male to qualify for the 1500m final in 40 years and this swimmer called Michael Phelps you may have heard of him.
THE CITY OF RIO
Before jet-setting to the biggest party for 2016, I didn’t properly prepare myself for the conditions of just how third world Brazil is.
Here’s a fun fact: When the the IOC awarded Rio the Olympics seven years ago, they had the seventh strongest economy in the world. At the time of writing, they have fallen all the way to 74th on the rankings.
Just let that sink in for a second.
Anyway, besides that fact we could only drink bottled water and weren’t supposed to flush toilet paper down the toilet (instead putting it in the bin – weird), I didn’t really encounter any other issues in Rio.
The safety concerns were overblown and if you were just smart, and stayed in groups and in lit up areas, you weren’t likely to get mugged in a city that dead set doesn’t sleep.
This was aided by the fact that the United States had most of the broadcast rights to the major sports, meaning sports such as swimming and beach volleyball weren’t finishing up until 1am at their respective arenas.
BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME
And come they did.
The atmosphere of having people dressed in their own respective national colours wherever you went is something very few events around the world can offer you.
On top of that, it was a great way to find fellow Australians or strike up conversations with sports fans from other nations.
And while people from all over the world did descend on the second biggest city in Brazil, it became apparent that certain things weren’t up to scratch.
Firstly, more than half the stadiums still had scaffolding around them while events were going on.
It’s not like Brazil had only a short time to build all this infrastructure.
They had more than five years to build facilities to house the 42 different sports on show but couldn’t manage it.
On top of that, the facilities were ridiculously spread out.
Sure there was the complex at Barra that housed the sports of cycling, basketball, tennis, European handball, indoor volleyball and swimming but that’s it.
Every other sport consisted of anywhere from a 45 minute walk to a two hour bus and train commute just to get to their respective venues.
For example, from our Air BnB apartment in Copacabana (which was absolutely fantastic) it took us close to 2.5 hours just to get to the hockey, was one of the primary reasons we made the journey.
Two trains of more than 45 minutes each followed by a 45 minute walk from the train station one stop from the hockey stadium (because the one closest to the venue wasn’t completed in time) nearly killed us every time we had to make the journey (especially if it was peak hour and we were like canned sardines on the carriage).
The transport system was the main negative I took from the whole experience and it wasn’t limited to just buses and trains.
Macca, Josh and I thought we would be smart and make our trip quicker to the hockey by catching an English Uber.
But how wrong we were.
We jumped in the car and the driver said the trip should only take approximately 45 minutes.
But because of stand-still traffic on the ‘apparent’ highways, it took us more than 2.5 hours to get to the hockey via car.
We even took a short cut through a dodgy favela and it still took this long, but thankfully we didn’t miss any of the Australian match.
NOTE: Another thing they could have fixed at the venues was the food and beverage service.
For example, an hour into the three-hour session for the men’s rugby seven’s finals, the whole complex ran out of beer.
And at the hockey, it wasn’t much better, as by day three, only one of the eight available food stalls actually was selling food, leading to extraordinarily long lines.
THERE’S MORE TO THE OLYMPICS THAN SPORT
Despite our hectic schedule, especially in the first week, we managed to fit in quite a bit of sightseeing too.
We redeemed all our sins by visiting Christ himself – and the view wasn’t half bad either.
NOTE: Going off the sheer amount of people up there, I assume there wer a lot of others trying redeem themselves for their acts.
While the view with Jesus was good, the view from Sugarloaf was extraordinary and right up there with some of the best views I’ve ever seen around the world.
It highlights just how big Rio actually is, with the city stretching as far as the horizon and my eyes could see.
But without a doubt, my personal favourite activity, not involving sport, was the favela tour Josh and I did.
Before partaking in the tour, we had been warned that it wasn’t safe and that people regularly get mugged on these sort of tours.
But luckily for us, we didn’t experience any of those problems.
Our tour guide was great and he explained that the favela we visited – Rocinha (little farm) – was the largest favela in Brazil, located in Rio de Janeiro's South Zone between the districts of São Conrado and Gávea.
He explained that more than 75,000 people lived under these incredible conditions, which really made us appreciate what we have here in Australia.
We learnt the history of the drug trade, which they used kites and children to distribute their product, how the favela functions and famous athletes that actually came from Rocinho.
Two of the better known names were UFC’s Anderson Silva and one of football’s greatest ever strikers, Ronaldo.
Our tour guide also explained how a lot of Brazil’s top football talent in recent years – Neymar, Ronaldinho, Thiago Silva – all come from favelas, as it is seen as the main way to get themselves and their families out of those conditions.
Other places I would recommend visiting in Rio are Lapa – where the famous steps reside and of course, Ipanema and Copacabana beaches.
But whatever you do, avoid Deodoro at all costs – talk about the ghetto.
This was the location of the hockey and it’s pretty evident it was a rough area, we on our 45 minute walk from the train station to the hockey stadium, the streets were lined by police and army forces.
In saying that, there was a large police/army presence at most places we went during the fortnight abroad.
FAMOUS FACES IN FAMOUS PLACES
On the plane over, the three amigos chatted among ourselves, stating athletes we would love to get a photo with.
The name Carmelo Anthony, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Neymar were popular choices but in all honesty, as soon we got there, all three of us (especially Macca) became the biggest fan boys of all time.
During our time there, we got photos with tennis stars Thanasi Kokkinakis and Sam Stosur, former gold medal winning beach volleyballer Nat Cook, New Zealand 2016 rowing gold medalist Eric Murray, Australian beach volleyballer Nikki Laird, the whole women’s rowing team and my personal favourite and hero of mine, Michael Klim.
No doubt they would have been asked to take a billion photos while the Olympics were going on but that comes with the territory.
This burden, of taking a billion photos, was felt by us three amigos while we were dressed in our green and gold party suits.
What usually took us 20 minutes to walk from our apartment to the beach volleyball took close to an hour, as every five minutes we were stopped for photos with strangers, as they loved our outfits.
Or maybe it was the fact that we had Jimbo, our inflatable kangaroo, with us.
Whatever it was, it was great to feel like a superstar.
But it would be amiss of me if I didn’t mention our other two colleagues, Shannon and Giorgia, who attended the beach volleyball and rugby sevens with us.
While on that topic, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and getting to know many other along the way such as; Lloyd, Ed, Caity, Em, Hannah, Scott, Danni, Edwina, Viv and Emma. Thanks for making the trip what it was.
MEMORIES WE CAN ONLY LAUGH ABOUT NOW
After attending the Boomers match, we followed the crowd across to the swimming and tried to buy tickets. Eventually we bought some off a dodgy guy that only who the copies on his phone. He said he would walk us into the venue, which he did, but once we were in there, we didn’t actually think the tickets were legit (seeing as though they were priced at 900 Real each, and we only paid 150 Real each). Anyway, we sat in the designated seats, waiting to be kicked out but no one ever did and we had amazing seats for our only swimming session.
While at the swimming, like any venue, they only accepted VISA card or cash. As we had used all our cash to buy the tickets into the venue, we all only had cards. As Macca and Josh only had Mastercards, my card was doing all the purchasing of the food and beverages. Or that’s what the plan was. Josh took my card to the bar, tried to by a round of beers and forgot my passcode, which I told him numerous times before he left. As such, he couldn’t buy any beers. I then headed down to buy beers, only to find that Josh had blocked my VISA card and that we had no way of purchasing anything. Thanks Josh.
Making it on to the big screen at every sports event was a mission of ours, and we achieved that goal more often than not. We even made the Channel 7 coverage on a number of occasion too.
The language barrier was a lot harder to overcome than I thought it would be. Going up to an information desk, you would assume at least one of the five or so people in the booth would speak English. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and generally, alot of people only spoke Portuguese. Let’s be honest here, the local people, who spoke Portuguese, attending the events probably weren’t the ones needing help to negotiate their way around, so I would have thought English would have a been a middle-ground language that most people could have used to get information. Obviously not.
Watching Fiji win their first ever Olympic medal was incredible. Seeing how much it meant to all the players, families and people of Fiji was something I will never forget.
WHEN IT’S ALL SAID AND DONE
The time abroad went way too quickly but I learnt a lot about Brazil, South America, the Olympics and myself while in Rio and it’s an experience I will keep with for the rest of my life.