Wednesday featured the first really ugly and messy day during our time here in Rio. We were greeted this morning with grey skies and light to moderate rain and it never really went away. I wasn’t sure if we were back in England or still in Rio.
Despite the poor weather, sailing continued to be listed as still on for Wednesday afternoon, so Kevin and I made the 50-minute trek out to Marina da Gloria for two sailing stories. The best part of the ride was that the route gets a nice charter bus and there were only three of us on it.
We arrived at the marina to the same type of poor weather but with one heck of a view. We walked right up to the shore and in front of us was Guanabara Bay and Sugarloaf Mountain. I don’t think any venue has even close to that type of scenery.
Sailing also turned out to be one hoping venue. There was a lot of interaction between the PA folks and the spectators. And sailing spectators are quite passionate too.
As for seeing the actual race, sailing falls way behind in that category. We tried watching the first race from the beach, but don’t ask me what happened. Despite the fact that this race was the closest to our position, it was hard to make out who was in the lead and what was going on. We spent over half of the race watching the big screen on the beach just to have an idea of what was happening.
We then moved back to the media workroom for the second race, since a) there were televisions and wifi and b) experts who we could talk to if we had a question.
Unfortunately, as soon as the second race started, it ended. Multiple boats were dead in the water because of the inconsistent winds, so all of the boats had to come back. It took another hour before the second race happened.
Once that race finally finished up, I rushed and by this point it was raining pretty hard. Fortunately, Louisa Chaffee wasn’t too slow getting to the mixed zone. After that I went back, wrote the recap (you can read that here) and then we headed back to the MPC.
Wednesday night I ventured down to the Rio 2016 Fest to watch the Brazil vs. Denmark men’s soccer match. I was surprised at the small crowd until they made an announcement about the match starting. All told about 200 hundred folks or so ended up watching Brazil give its country a massive sigh of relief, albeit possibly temporary.
Thursday I will be covering fencing. Fun.
Miles walked today: 7.46
Total miles walked: 77.12
Rio Olympics Blog — Day Twelve: Much needed rest
