#ISupportWomenInSport
Containing Road Rage
Despite our big Olympic bus taking up way too much of the road in laneways, people on the street would helpfully guide our driver. I never noticed a cranky honk or an upturned finger by anyone, even when someone was doing a U-Turn in the middle of a busy street or driving the wrong way down the road.
Velodrome Building
In one afternoon we saw cyclists breaking two Olympic Records as well as two World Records. Not by milliseconds but whole multiple seconds. Which, speaking as a non-sports commentator, makes me think the Velodromo Municipal do Rio must have become the fastest track in the world. Just don’t take my word for it.
Speedy Transitions
You may not be able to get to an event on time due to traffic jams and plans changing for the fifth time but those Brazilians don’t muck around in between heats or finals of, say, the swimming, diving or cycling. Cyclists from one event would often still be on the track when the next round of cyclists came on to do their thing. Go for a toilet break and you could miss everything.
Putting on an Olympics
Despite what we’ve all heard about lack of preparedness and danger in Rio, to manage having half-a-million tourists descend on you all at once, create 32 bespoke venues and schedule 42 sports is most certainly an Olympic feat – for any nation. Plus, I seriously don’t believe it would have been as charming an experience if everything was absolutely perfect, controlled, sterile and finished. Gold medal performance, Rio.
Mozzie Swatting
After a rainy night our bus was so pumping with mozzies that we drove to the soundtrack of hands hitting glass and the pungent fragrance of DEET spray.
Being Well-Staffed
The Brazilians basically have eight people to do every task in a shop or café: you order from one person, they hand your order to another person, who tells you to move to the next queue where someone taking cash tells you to go to a different queue because you’re paying by card, who then lets you pay and gives you a receipt that you have to take to the next person. Then someone grabs the drink from the fridge and passes it to the person who passes it to you. No. Joke. If you’re in a hurry, don’t even think about nipping to the store to quickly grab a bottle of water.
Beach Volleyball
Because they seriously have more volleyball nets on the beach than girls in polka dot bikinis. But, oh yeah, they already have that in the Olympics.
Alice is reporting from Rio for Women’s Health with Swisse. #swissepoweringdreams
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