PARIS.- Any athlete with Olympic dreams knows what it feels like to have your lungs burning, your arms and legs shaking as an important race or match approaches.
For a final adrenaline rush, they usually get energy from the fans. At the last two Olympic Games – summer and winter – there were no fans due to the pandemic of COVID-19. But that burst of energy that fans and families bring to the games will be back once again in Paris.
The Paris Olympics will celebrate a return to “normality” after a period in which host cities were turned into bunkers and those who had earned their place were denied a fully Olympic experience.
“A lot of athletes told me that Tokyo was the worst Games,” admitted American Jagger Eaton, who made his Olympic debut in skateboarding in 2021 and will return this year. “And I was like, ‘I love it here.’ I didn’t know any better.”
WITHOUT MASK
Eaton and hundreds of other returning Olympians won’t have to wear masks, take daily nose swab tests or spit into plastic containers for COVID. Quarantine for those suspected of having the virus is a thing of the past.
“I’ve heard horror stories,” said Paralympic volleyball player Nicki Nieves, who had to cancel her trip three days before her team was due to fly to Tokyo after testing positive for COVID. “I’m excited to have the fans back.”
NO EMPTY SEATS
Two years ago, during the Winter Games in Beijing, hundreds of fans were driven five hours to watch snowboarding action while hitting loud poles and wearing masks in sub-zero-degree temperatures. Almost no foreign fans attended.
A year earlier, at the Tokyo Olympics, the spectators were practically the coaches, officials and volunteers who occupied a fraction of the seats.
When Italy’s Marcell Jacobs took the title as the “World’s Fastest Man” by winning the 100 metres, his shouts of celebration echoed around the nearly empty 68,000-seat Olympic Stadium. This was far from the celebrations Usain Bolt was used to.
For decades, athletes have told stories of how fans helped push them to the finish line. Rower Michelle Sechser called the final 250 meters of the race, with the cheers of the crowd, “the last crescendo of the sprint.”
“When it’s time for the sprint of the race, knowing that we will have the cheers of the fans, it is always an extra motivation to hear them,” admitted Sechser.
Source: AP
