A Tale of Two Venues: the Bird's Nest & the Water Cube

Last night China clinched gold and bronze medals in women’s 3m springboard diving; Russia grasped the silver. The night was blessedly comfortable and those lucky enough to attend either the semifinals in women’s 3m diving or athletics at the Bird’s Nest roamed the parks as if it were a summer festival.

The Water Cube is seductive. It beckons to each and every photographer, amateur and professional alike, and pleases them all with its “bubbles” glistening like fish-scales, mutating from violet to blue to green before glowing violet again in the darkness. Yet, I don’t like the inside of the Cube. Women queue almost 30 deep for the FOUR restrooms available, inside which are 9-10 squat stalls. Music blares a bit TOO loudly after each and every dive – that’s twelve divers, five attempts each, with some additional breaks, for 60 or more deafening tunes over almost two hours. Fragrant perfume and odorous snack smells both attack my olfactory senses. It’s a tough night of viewing, folks.

I lament that I’ve forgotten my binoculars, as the divers appear smaller than my pinky fingernail from our seat location; yet, thankfully, the big screens show great slow-motion replays of each dive. I regret having NO knowledge of how to score a dive; yet, over the course of the evening, even I begin to catch on to the fluid perfection that Guo Jingjing, the night’s winner and new Chinese record holder for dive medals, displays in her dives. I cannot even begin to imagine the pressure each diver faces as she stands alone on the diving board, or as a camera looms in her face during each post-dive shower. Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia (Guo’s partner in synchronized diving) show neither pleasure nor regret over their dives; cameras show them impassive before and after each dive.

The entire Chinese audience acts as proud family when Wu Minxia and Guo Jingjing receive their medals with silver medalist Julia Pakhalina of Russia. The crowd joins in unison for the Chinese national anthem and more cheers finally bring emotion to Guo as she tries to hold back tears and smiles. People stay to the very end to photograph, greet, wave and applaud their new diving queens as they and Julia promenade before the crowd, holding their flowers tightly against their newly, and deservedly, won medals.

(Photo: Crowds trying to enter Bird's Nest security stations.)

This morning I realize that my own Olympic training is incomplete. All the meal planning, careful bedtimes and rousing wake up calls have not prepared me for attendance at almost daily Olympic events, most particularly this morning’s athletics at the Bird’s Nest following last night’s competition at the Water Cube. Only my husband is his usual cheerful self; the rest of us are sluggish and quiet (and yes, once or twice downright sullen) until we have completely awakened.

We arrive at the Bird’s Nest a little bit before the 9 o’clock start time, but we are not alone on this beautiful, clear morning. Hundreds are there with us, and I experience my first trickle of fear as people push and shove to get through the small gate opening that leads to the security lines. Inconceivably, about six young volunteers are on the inside limiting entrance to about twenty people at a time; outside there are no orderly queues and foreigners and Chinese alike surge and push to make the cut. As I clutch my son and yell to those behind me not to push, I think to myself, So this is how those tragic crushing accidents at soccer games in Europe have occurred! Once inside this gate, the eight double security lanes still move slowly. Tarps or mist machines cool the queues from the sun. I watch Lane 1, labeled for elderly or disabled, as various people, neither old nor infirm, attempt to use it and are valiantly turned away by two young female volunteers. I see one man in a wheelchair and marvel that he managed to get through that wild throng uninjured!

I like the Bird’s Nest. It also has an organic, appealing, unique architecture, but where the Water Cube teases, the Bird’s Nest delivers. Once inside the bottleneck security, there are lots of entries, lots of restrooms, lots of snack bars (you can complain about the snack offerings, but there is plenty of opportunity to buy them!), lots of seats and lots of stairways. We are a bit watchful of the sun. Thankfully, we are fifteen rows away and near the triple jump section and the start of the 200 m. race, but we see the sun moving inexorably towards us and don’t know if we’ll escape it or not. Those already in the sun either fan themselves constantly; hide under newspapers, hats or parasols; or give up and move, to where I don’t know.

On display this morning were qualifying rounds for women’s hammer throw, men’s triple jump, men’s 200 and 400 meter races, and men’s 110 meter hurdles. Big names were there like Usain Bolt of Jamaica, 100 m. champion and world record holder, and Jeremy Wariner, 400 m. world and Olympic champion. Probably the most significant events were tragic, though: the injuries of American hurdler Terrence Trammel and, more devastatingly to China, the injury to Athens gold medalist and national treasure Liu Xiang. Liu was in the final heat of the final race of the morning; he took three steps at a false start, and just stopped, turned, walked off the field and through a tunnel. The audience was shocked and didn’t know what was happening. Then, as the large screen showed him walking into the interior of the stadium, sitting and being approached by medics and security, a sorrowful buzz grew from an audience who had obviously pinned great hopes on him. Those leaving the Nest were a bit quieter than they might have been, as one of China’s great Olympic hopes was dashed by an injury.