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"Off The Record"
A Blog by Jill
M. Geer
Shallow thoughts, Keen observations, Part I
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
I've had too many "deep thoughts" lately, and my mind is racing from too much caffeine, too late at night, with too little water. Tonight is a scattershot blog with thoughts from Wednesday night's competition:
* Bernard Lagat did a great job of getting out of a tough jam to take the bronze in the men's 1,500. Had he not been stuck for most of the last lap, having to move horizontally rather than vertically for a few strides in the homestretch, I would have liked him for gold. If the 5,000 is tactical, the field better watch out. Kip is ready.
* How weird was it to see three USA jerseys, almost side by side, with about 500m to go in the men's 1,500m final? Weirder than seeing Pat Robertson, Jonathan Edwards and Sarah Palin at a Phish concert. It's a weirdness I hope to see more of in the future.
* Bernard Lagat has many wonderful qualities about him, 99.99 percent of which have nothing to do with track and field. One of them is his ability to remember not only peoples' names, but also the names, ages and interests of their children. Whenever I see Kip (as he is known to friends), he always asks about my family. On the first day of competition in Berlin, a Canadian journalist sitting next to me here in the stadium spoke about how he saw Bernard for the first time in about a year recently. The journalist was wondering if Bernard would even remember him, but the first thing out of Kip's mouth was, "how is your son's guitar playing going?" And the really great thing about it is that Bernard is not making small talk, he is really interested.
* I always love seeing the host country fare well at a World Championships or Olympic Games, because it whips the crowd into an absolute tizzy. I have never heard a louder crowd than when a Spaniard was the first to enter the stadium to win the men's marathon in Seville in 1999. With a German thrower behind it all, Wednesday night provided what is easily the greatest crowd-involvement moment of these championships.
Sitting in second throughout the men's discus final behind two national-record throws by Poland's Piotr Malachowski, Robert Harting of Germany won the gold on his final throw. The moment the disc hit the grass, the crowd went nuts. But that was just the start of it.
Worked into a frenzy himself, Harting grabbed his head, widened his eyes, zipped his lips, grabbed his head again, tore his jersey off, ran around the track like a water bug, and topped it off by picking up the Berlin 2009 mascot – a human in giant brown bear get-up – by his ankles and hoisting him off the ground. Other than Bolt's 9.58, that will be the most memorable moment of Berlin, I venture to guess.
This is the same bear that was running on the track during the men's 10,000m final. Naughty bear!
* One of the jokes in the press tribune is that the catch-phrase theme of these championships, "Have a Good Time!", is trademarked. Yes, trademarked. What's the next phrase up for trademark? "How's it going?"
* Can you stand one more anecdote about why I like Tyson Gay so much? I saw him at the team hotel last night, shook his hand and said "Congratulations." His response, without a hint of irony, bitterness or playing dumb, was a sincere, "What for?" I am not making that up. He had no clue why I would be congratulating him.
* In case you are wondering, yes it is true: to have a German passport, you must wear tragically chic eyeglass frames. From the moment I stepped off my plane, I have yet to see a German with unfashionable specs. A 7-year-old girl on the jumbotron Wednesday night even had supercool purple glasses.
* Favorite Team USA lunchroom companion: A.G. Kruger. Great guy. Funny stories. Looks exactly like my older brother, but I don't hold that against him. Otherwise, I would spend my lunch worrying about if he would start giving me noogies or punching me in the leg without warning.
* Berlin is a wonderful city that I would rank as one of my favorites in Europe. But you do see unusual things here. One that always leaves me scratching my head is the Biergarten (translation: "beergarden") directly across the street from the team hotel. What's so weird about a Biergarten ("beergarden") in Berlin? Nothing. Except that it has a huge neon depiction, in graphic glory, of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan. Every time the team bus arrives back at the hotel at night, the first thing we see upon getting off the bus is this piece of "art" that shows the very moment that the swan, aka Zeus, lays his "golden egg" inside Leda.
I encourage readers of this blog to look up Leda and the Swan on Wikipedia. If you can figure out the connection between that myth, the invention of neon art, and Berlin and/or the Biergarten ("beergarden"), drop me an email.
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Jill
M. Geer is Chief Public Affairs Officer of USATF. She recently completed her
first marathon at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, where she qualified for
Boston. Follow her professional exploits as the USATF spokesperson and her
adventures as a mid-pack marathoner -- Off The Record.
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