Category Archives: Sport

Okens versus Phelps at the Water Cube


Posted by Patrick Okens

Nov. 28 – Beijing

If you’re a swimmer, the logic is simple. You’re in Beijing, so you have to see the famous National Aquatics Center. Since you’re going to slog through 15 million commuters to get there, you should swim there if possible. And if you can get in the water, you might as well put in some hard strokes.

I was sitting outside the entrance polishing off a tin of Lay’s potato chips, waiting for the Water Cube to open. Thinking, maybe I wasn’t taking the challenge seriously enough. The task I had set myself was to beat Michael Phelps’ 400m I.M. time from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, where he had won eight gold medals. For non-swimmers, “I.M.” stands for individual medley; butterfly, back stroke, breast stroke and front crawl in sequence. I was only going to swim 200m – 50m of each stroke – and try to go faster than his world record time of 4:03.84. In other words, I wanted to know if I was half the swimmer Phelps was.

Fifty Yuan (seven dollars) fee paid, I entered the gigantic bubble-wrapped structure. I had my picture taken (photo I.D. I’ll never use again, but a cool souvenir), paid the one-time mandatory 20 Yuan “deep water certification”, and got my locker fob key. The change room was spacious and uncrowded since I had deliberately chosen noon on a Monday for this excursion. And soon I was on deck of the 50m long, ten-lane wide practice pool. (Not the main competition pool. More on that below.)

An attendant made an out-and-back motion with her arm and said “one hundred metres”. Two lengths to get my deep water certification. That formality done, I slid over to the middle lane and got a feel for the water. It was warmer than I had expected, somehow slipperier, and felt fast. I suppose there are some fancy physics behind this – my half of the pool was maybe 2.5m deep all the way, whereas the other half was shallower. But probably I was just on an adrenaline high from being someplace special, swimming for the first time in over a month. Woohoo indeed.

There was plenty of space. As I went through my warm up, then some drills, I shared my lane with two stout older ladies, and we managed to stay out of each other’s way. I exchanged begoggled nods with one of them, and she struck up a conversation. She spoke no English, and I no Mandarin, but here’s what I think we said to each other:

“Mister strange looking, bearded, yellow-capped foreigner, your legs are dragging too low in the water.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Mister foreigner, you should swim more on the surface of the water. It is faster.”

“Thank you for the advice. But this means using strength and skill which I lack.”

“Mister foreigner, this is regrettable.”

“I agree.”

My lane mates left after an hour, and I had 50m all to myself. Time to see what I could do. As in drunkenness, there are four stages to athletic exertion: lion, lamb, monkey and pig. I started boldly with my newly-learned butterfly stroke. Backstroke was done more gently, the movement slightly awkward. The turns at the wall were part monkey, part Michael Jackson, and no part Michael Phelps. Like doing the “Thriller” dance underwater. Pig stage – wallowing and squealing – meant a final 50m that just wouldn’t end. I touched the wall, scrabbled for my wristwatch and saw 3:36. The virtual Phelps, trailing in my wash, finished in 4:03. I could barely feel my legs as I slid back in over my head, exhaling bubbles. Yessss! A very modest achievement, I’ll admit. But I crossed an ocean to get there.

Once dressed, I toured the building. Games banners and national flags still adorn the hall, and the diving pool is operational. But the main competition pool area was being set up for some sort of media trade show. The other side of the facility now features a massive water amusement park, complete with multi-story slides, splash pad and wave pool. I stepped out of the Water Cube and onto the massive Olympic Green that connects to the adjoining Bird’s Nest Stadium. The colossal vista did what its designers surely intended; impress people with China’s potential.  My arms and shoulders pleasantly numbed from the effort, I walked away. Through the still air, the recorded voice of Celine Dion warbled the 2008 anthem “One world one dream” on auto repeat.


Laowai Lushang! (Foreigners on the road!)


Posted by Patrick Okens

Nov. 24 – Beijing

“Hooooly mother of Mao, what have I gotten myself into?” Ahead of me, Daniel smartly steered his bike between two transit buses while I clumsily veered back out of the traffic and onto the sidewalk. Barely out of the apartment complex and dropped already. Ca commence mal.

It started yesterday, in fact. Daniel is an avid cyclist and in his salad days was a top amateur racer in France. He’s a very fit 61 now, rides wherever he can, and was determined to have me experience cycling in Beijing. He made some calls and found me a rental at the Trek shop in the embassy district, 30km away. 200 Yuan (about $30) got me a slightly too small bike and a slightly too large helmet. It was a basic Trek Alpha, aluminium frame, Sora components, flat pedals, and slightly undermaintained. All the same, it would do the job. The helmet’s size wasn’t a problem, since I would be wearing a tuque underneath to ward off the zero degree temperatures. While the bike was being readied I looked around at the store’s wares and gawked at the Trek Madone 6.1’s price tag of nearly $13,000. Performance cycling in China (the UCI Pro Tour held the inaugural Tour of Beijing in October) is growing quickly but is still very much a rich man’s game. Prices overall are similar to what one might pay in the West.

Getting back home should have been straightforward. Forget the crowded subway and hail a cab. Nothing doing, not even with the help of the Trek store clerks. Fortunately, they made some calls and soon a minivan appeared with a driver willing to take me home for 150 Yuan ($22). It was dark and took several wrong turns and phone calls with additional instructions before we arrived. Of course, the driver then wanted more money, claiming he’d driven further than agreed. My memories of being Shanghaied were fresh. After raised voices, mutual incomprehension, and slight bicycle tug of war at the elevator, the matter was over. I didn’t pay any more, but there were bad feelings all round.

Back to the ride story. If cycling has a “sink or swim” equivalent, this surely was it. We had avoided the morning rush, but in a megacity of 15 million, “off-peak” is still a lot of people on the move. So the first few kilometers were stressful. Left-handers through high volume intersections; sudden accelerations to get ahead of slow trucks; red lights optional, and occasionally a bad idea; dodging oncoming wrong-way vehicles; hearing the horn and engine of an approaching bus behind you. Thinking about what could happen doesn’t help in such situations. Focusing of the task at hand does.

After blue skies yesterday the smog was back after all. The U.S. Embassy reading was “very unhealthy” and would rise to “hazardous” during the day. Daniel said that normally he would not have ridden under those conditions, but it was now or never for me. I’ll say this, though. If you’re willing to risk life, lung and limb riding out of Beijing, it’s great in the countryside. The roads are good, wide and quite free of traffic. First destination was Xishan (West mountain) 3km at 10% of steep, shoelace switchbacks on clean concrete slabs all the way up. I got about two-thirds of the way before the drooling, phlegm-spitting, out-of-the-saddle, square-pedaling started. “Okens in difficulty” indeed. I can blame all sorts of things (and will), but the end result was Daniel casually pointing out various sights, as he dropped me. A feeble “ggnnhh” was my only response.

The view from Xishan was as good as a smoggy late November day would allow – mediocre. However, there were plenty of vigorous dog-walking seniors at the summit with whom Daniel could chat. The fast, full-on-braking, sharp-twisting descent took us past cedar plantations, rusty pine needles blanketing the ground. We heard chatty magpies, late-crowing roosters and even a small herd of goats. As the road leveled out, there was a broken down farmhouse, a cemetery, and a new, shockingly western-looking neighborhood – all skylights, slanting roofs, courtyards and driveways. We stopped for a snack of salty pastries at a roadside stall in a village. It was below zero, factoring in the wind chill, and we warmed our hands on the shopkeeper’s griddle.

I had made full use of my sports wardrobe (5 layers on top), but 3+ hours and 75km is a long time to spend in the elements. Breathing was no longer my only problem. Long-neglected Iliotibial bands also started to complain, and my speed started to slacken. On the plains north of Beijing we went alongside dark, partially frozen rivers with anglers on the banks, dodged the thankfully well-behaved stray dogs, and zipped past all two, three and four-wheeled traffic out there. The finale was food, of course. No Tim Horton’s for us, but rather a shop serving big bowls of beef and noodles.

In honour of American Thanksgiving (in any case we were still ravenous), dinner tonight was delivery Domino’s pizza and apple pie, all washed down with Great Wall cabernet sauvignon. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I might have to go hunting for replacement ligaments and muscles. I hear you can get them for cheap in China, like almost everything else.