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The wheelchair racer Joshua George competed in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and wrote for the 2012 London blog. Readers can continue to follow him on his Web site, joshgeorgeracing.com
LONDON — The London Paralympics ended with a series of bangs. Whereas the opening ceremony sought to counter the magnitude and scale of the Beijing Games with style and substance, the closing ceremony threw the scale out the window. The program revolved around Coldplay, a popular band from this rock ‘n’ roll-infused nation, hammering out tunes from center stage. And its lead singer, Chris Martin, tapped his mega-super-international-rock-star-club connections to persuade Rihanna and Jay-Z to drop by the Olympic Stadium to sing a few songs.
I skipped out on the closing ceremony in Athens and cannot recall a single instant from the closing ceremony in Beijing, but I guarantee I will never forget London’s. Even in my energy-sapped state, having just finished a 64-turn maze of a marathon course that left me shattered with blood-glucose levels in the subbasement a few hours earlier, I was blown away by the spectacle surrounding me.
It was the most successful Paralympic Games in history, to a point where it could have forever changed the way the Paralympics are perceived.
Harry Engels/Getty ImagesFrom left, the silver medalist Brent Lakatos of Canada, the gold medalist Richard Colman of Australia and the bronze medalist Joshua George at the ceremony for the 800 meters in London on Wednesday.The wheelchair racer Joshua George will be competing in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and writing for the 2012 London blog.
LONDON — Just before the start of each race the crowd goes silent. Eighty thousand people stop cheering and begin waiting, anticipating the race to come. The sound of the gun not only causes the competitors to explode off the line, but the crowd to erupt in sound as well.
This is how it happens for every race, and this is how it happened for my 800-meter final, my third event and second chance at the podium in the Paralympic Games. As I exploded around the first bend I’m sure the volume of the crowd noise began to increase, though it was nothing more than white noise in the periphery of my thoughts.
“Get out, get out!” I screamed to myself, hearing nothing more than the sound of my gloved hands on the push rims of my racing chair. I flew out of the first turn and lengthened my stroke as I hit the backstretch, my hands shooting off the bottoms of the push rims, stretching high above my back and pouncing back toward the rim. The track was empty ahead of me and I knew my competitors were scrambling behind me to fall in my draft.
I told myself before the race that whatever happened was going to happen from the front. In wheelchair racing, much like cycling, the lead man in a pack is at a disadvantage. While they are cutting through the wind the athletes in the back take advantage of the slipstream created by the lead and are able to maintain the same speeds with much less effort. This technique is called drafting.
In a perfect wheelchair race you want to sit in second or third place, taking full advantage of the draft from the lead racer while insuring that you don’t get boxed in on the outside. At some point in the final 400 meters you begin your kick, using all the energy you saved in the draft to sling yourself around the chairs ahead of you and embark in an all-out sprint to the finish. In the perfect race you are the first person to cross the finish line.
My racing to this point had been anything but perfect. I quickly got my head back after my 400-meter debacle, but despite hitting some good speeds in my 1,500-meter semifinal, I allowed myself to be ushered to the back just before the final kick and failed to make the final, as all four racers ahead of me accelerated at the same pace and hit the same top speeds in the final lap. I ran fast, but just as fast as all four ahead of me. We finished in the same arrangement that we entered the final lap. Read more…
Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressJoshua George competing in a 400-meter race in London on Sunday.The wheelchair racer Joshua George will be competing in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and writing for the 2012 London blog.
LONDON–Some losses will keep you up at night. Some losses leave you so baffled as to what just happened that your mind scours every little detail of every second before and during the race trying to find the answer to the questions why and what. Why did I go so slow? What in the world just happened?
Day 4 of Paralympic competition brought with it my first event, the 400 meters. My excitement levels soared as I rode the bus over to the warm-up track outside Olympic Stadium. I had been waiting so long for this moment. The chance to race in the stadium and feel the energy of the crowd left me shaking in anticipation, but the moment felt like it would never come. Even on the day of the race I couldn’t get on the track fast enough.
It is customary to arrive at the warm-up track up to two and a half hours before your race. This leaves time to warm up and work out any kinks with your body or equipment. Athletes are ushered into a series of “call rooms” 40 minutes before their race. Athletes sit, grouped with the other competitors in their heats, while officials check their equipment and race numbers. The first call room is a giant tent at the end of the warm-up track.
From there athletes are taken over a bridge path that leads to the ground floor of the stadium and into the final call room, which is situated under the stands behind the 100-meter start line of the track. Athletes are given their lane numbers and allowed to finish their warm-up on an 80-meter stretch of track. From here, athletes are finally ushered onto the track for their competition.
It takes an eternity to get from the warm-up track to the stadium track. Two eternities if it is your first race of the competition and three eternities in London because events seem to be perpetually delayed because of constant breaks for medal ceremonies. By the time I got to the final call room for my 400-meter preliminary, I felt as though I could punch through a brick wall. I had been forcing myself to go through all the mental exercises that my sports psychologist had taught me, and was focusing on my own race, but I could do nothing to control the excitement. Read more…
Ian Kington/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMembers of the United States delegation at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in London.The wheelchair racer Joshua George will be competing in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and writing for the 2012 London blog.
LONDON — The roar of the crowd as the British contingent entered the track on Wednesday sent shivers down my spine. Eighty thousand people erupted as the athletes wove their way through the brightly colored dancers, showered in camera flashes and always under the watchful eye of Queen Elizabeth II.
We had yet to make it around the track when the crowd cranked up the volume, halting all of my thoughts and conjuring images of homestretch sprints and tearful podiums. The 2012 Paralympics had truly begun.
It was easily the greatest opening ceremony that I have been a part of. With the stadium situated so close to the athletes’ village, the Parade of Nations began there, with each country marching in alphabetical order from across Olympic Park and into the Olympic Stadium, which shimmered like a crown in the crisp, clear night. The 1,200-meter walk took two hours.
I was able to have a brief conversation with a dear friend of mine from Australia as he was on his way back to the village after marching through the stadium (athletes were allowed to march in and leave early so they could take part in the ceremony and still be in bed at a reasonable hour), a full 30 minutes before the United States even entered the stadium.
The wait to get in was worth it, however. The ceremony, narrated by Stephen Hawking and starring Ian McKellen, portrayed a young girl’s intellectual journey through the great thinkers of human history with an unmissable theme of the unshakable fortitude of human spirit and ability regardless of loss of limb or function. There was some questionable music, though, with lyrics mired in metaphor.
Most of you reading this, however, haven’t the foggiest idea what happened during the Paralympic opening ceremony. Unlike in the rest of the developed world, the ceremony was not broadcast in the United States, and it did not make a big splash in major American newspapers. It is a shame, really. The ceremony was incredible, an event that many deemed even better than the opening ceremony for the Olympics.
Ian Gavan/Getty ImagesJoshua George racing through Parliament Square during the Virgin London Marathon in 2010.The wheelchair racer Joshua George will be competing in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and will be writing for the 2012 London blog throughout the event.
LONDON–Outside the apartment building set to house the United States contingent in the Paralympic Village is an enormous picture frame with ornate scrollwork, spray-painted gold. The frame is held upright by two concrete blocks resisting the persistent wind that has whipped through the trees and flags lining the street in front of it since the day we moved in.
The frame itself is empty, the picture constantly changing depending on who is walking by, who stops to create their own picture and decides what is to be framed.
It was the first thing I was drawn to after the bus dumped us in front of the complex, posing for my royal portrait before I even threw my bags in my new home for the next two weeks. I’m sure more people will begin to take more notice of the frame once the Games begin, posing with medals won, framing their moment. Framing their Paralympic Games. Read more…
Daniel Berehulak/Getty ImagesMichelle Kasold, right, is challenged for the ball by Melody Cooper of New Zealand on Aug. 4 during the Olympics.Michelle Kasold, a striker, has been a member of the United States field hockey team since 2006, and competed in her first Olympics in London. She has written regularly for the 2012 London Olympics blog. This is her fourth post.
The Olympic Games have officially ended. There is so much to say about the experience I have just had, but at the same time I am at a loss for words. Although I will never be able to explain my experience as an Olympic athlete fully, I will give you some highlights of my favorite moments over the past two weeks in London.
Before the Games, our team left the village for a couple of days for a retreat to Middle Stanley, set in the beautiful English countryside. We spent a lot of time relaxing, getting away from the crazy anticipation of the beginning of competition. It was a chance for all 16 of our players to just enjoy one another’s company in the simplest form. We shared laughs and tears, but it made us appreciate, even more, the amazing people we were around.
My favorite part of the two weeks was the opening ceremony. The memories I have from that one night will stay with me forever. The feeling of being a part of Team USA, not just USA Field Hockey, was incredible. I met athletes from every sport as we walked and wove and navigated our way to the stadium. A rush of emotion took over as we entered the stadium for the first time, behind our flag, as the world was watching. I still get chills. The rest of the ceremony seemed to fly by, until “Hey Jude” played over the loudspeakers.
The world slowed, almost to a stop. My teammates and I embraced, arm in arm, and swayed back and forth. In the moment, we had one another and shared the joy of being together, as a part of something bigger. Within minutes, we had a crowd of United States athletes joining us, a symbol of Team USA’s bond. Read more…
Michael Regan/Getty ImagesHeather O’Reilly after the United States women’s soccer team defeated Japan to win the gold medal at the Olympics in London.Heather O’Reilly, a midfielder on the United States women’s soccer team and a two-time gold medalist, will be writing regularly for the 2012 London Olympics blog. This is her sixth post.
We did it. We did what we went to London to do. We won the gold. Although it is incredibly hard to have that kind of standard, a “gold or bust” mentality, those are just the cards we have been dealt from the legends who came before us. This team has always been about being trying to be the best.
And to be honest, we wouldn’t have it any other way. That mentality carried us in London. Anyone who watched our games over the last month knew that this team had a special will to win. When our backs were against the wall, we fought a little harder, we dug a little deeper, and we played a little more together. Read more…
On London’s Olympic stage, athletes, fans and volunteers created a memorable experience. Four New York Times reporters reflect on their impressions covering their first Olympics.
Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters
A crowd adopted Christian Alberto Lopez Bobadilla.
Now it can be told: there is a lot of Wikipedia in the press section at the Olympics. For every reporter who can tell you that a waza-ari was clearly just a glorified yuko or that the Hungarian is the one to watch, there are quite a few more — the feature writers, the curious onlookers who normally cover track and field, the poor souls who were assigned a dozen different sports, me — typing “judo + rules” into Google.
An argument can be made that this is excusable. There is just so much going on, so many different events in so many different places, all at the same time. Victory ceremonies are squeezed in between long jumps; a fencer’s dream is dashed while three other bouts are going on around her; the javelins sail toward the high jumpers.
The Olympics seem like a giant, ultraefficient sports factory, churning out triumph and disappointment on a stunning scale. Considered this way, they are still routinely electrifying. It is hard to beat the thrill of being in a crowd of spectators, many of whom are there because it was the only ticket they could get, roaring for a weight lifter from Guatemala as if the fate of humanity hinged on Christian Alberto Lopez Bobadilla’s battle against the law of gravity.
But the one-big-human-family element of the Olympics is only a part of the event, as is the one big American (or Chinese or British or Kenyan) family or even all the examples of individuals overcoming adversity (because, let’s be honest, there is so much overcoming that it becomes difficult to recall which adversity was overcome, and by whom).
You really can get a lot of that from television, tape-delayed or not.
What you can’t get from TV, and what I came to really love about the Olympics, were the little shavings on the factory floor, the curious byproducts of an event that brings together so many people from so many places in such narrow quarters. Read more…
Periodically throughout the Olympics, we checked in with Dennis Spurr, the owner of the Fantastic Sausage Factory in Weymouth, a pretty town on the English coast where the sailing events took place. Spurr’s sausage business was a target of the Olympic branding authorities in 2007 after he put up a sign featuring the Olympic five-ring logo done in sausage links. He took it down on their demands, but replaced it with a sign featuring five squares made of sausage links.
Q. So this is it, last day. How you feeling?
A. I’m Olympic’d out. We’ve been so busy and we’re worn out now. We’ve just gone by the bus stop where the park and ride drops everybody out, and all the buses are all parked up. There are about 60 over there, all these pretty-colored buses, and this is their last day today. It’s quite the sight to see all these buses there, and tomorrow morning, they’ll all be gone. We were just saying, just seeing all those buses there, we should have taken some pictures of them.
