'Beijing report my way'

by Junko

Day 1: Ni Hao Beijing

Time was winter. It was cold, dark and rainy when I arrived in Beijing. No, that's not true. I will start over.

Airport

I arrived in Beijing at 6:30am, sunny Friday morning. Soon I found out it was a bit of a challenge to take a taxi to the host hotel, Xiyuan of Beijing. I was thrown out of the taxi voluntarily because the rate I told them I wanted was unacceptably cheap to the proud illegal driver and his female friend. They (a driver and friend) wanted 280 Yuan to the hotel and I said, would pay 50 Yuan. Oh, it got okay though. We reconciled after some negotiation and a call to wake up Jan for the rate info, with reasonable and agreeable rate. When I was checking in to Xiyuan Hotel at the lobby, Tiggie came out and welcomed me with a hug. It was nice.

Tickets

Kimo, Jan, Tiggie, Sonia and I all met at the lobby of the hotel to go to the rink together later morning on Friday. The tickets for the competitions for three days were on call at the box office of the venue. Okay, that's not accurate. Actually, Kimo and Jan's friend, former speed skater, an Olympian, and current assistant coach of women's National Team of China, Yang Yang S had reserved and had been keeping the tickets for eight people who were Ruthie, Jennifer G, Anna, Sonia, Tiggie, Jan, Kimo and me.

According to Kimo, we had to meet Yang Yang at the rink for the tickets. We started a 10 minutes journey on foot to the rink to look for Yang Yang S. It was supposed to be 10 minutes journey but we took nearly an hour to find Yang Yang S among Chinese speaking people and a few buildings. Kimo stopped Jiajun Li for the information close to their hotel (dorm?) building. He gave us the valid information in all Chinese. We only understood his hand gestures and his "yes, yes" in Chinese. Great!

Commuting

All skaters, coaches, officials and spectators mostly walked to the venue but Steve Robillard of Canada. He commuted on his inline skates. He glided in when Yang Yang S was about to hand deliver us the tickets in front of the box/security office at the back entrance for the participants and officials. Cool!

Competition

It was exciting and thrilling from the day 1 to say the least. We leaned our heads to the right and to the left (thinking mode) when trying to figure out what had happened to Halie Kim. She seemed okay but she had to leave the ice after the fall. We felt for Allison Baver when she got DNF. It took us a while to collect the information of how Allison finished the race because from where we were, it looked as she just finished first. We figured out everything. We became almost street wise that day, no... in this case... ah, ice wise.

When Apolo got DQ at semi, we were rather emotional. We knew something had happened while watching the race before the actual fall took place. We all intuitively felt or with acquired knowledge we knew that it wasn't Apolo's fault. We were waiting for the call from referees in favor of Apolo. We had no doubt in our mind that Apolo would be the one who could be advanced if the call was made.

There were two large screens close to the ceilings on each side of the rink to show the skating live and to show it on video. They played the video of the fall of Mathieu Turcotte and Apolo over and over on large screens while referees also reviewing and debating of the video. Turcotte's blade contacted Apolo's blade and they started to fall. I am sure Turcotte didn't deliberately try to intercept Apolo with his blade. In that speed if your blade touched the other skater's blade, yeah, you might be the history in that race. When the announcement came up and found they disqualified Apolo, our sentiment was "After all those video reviewing, you came up with this? What were you watching?" Sad!

Request

This is my personal request to Apolo. Please try not to stay in the back of the pack to the last two rounds. It is not good for my deeply buried tiny pace maker in my heart. Okay, not true again. In reality I have a strong heart but the other skaters already know your strategy and they try to prevent you from moving up to the front in the last few rounds.

Please let them not predict your move. Don't let them read you.

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