Not every day is a croissant or pain au chocolat day, as you might imagine from the columnists who come to Paris to cover the Olympic Games. Some days are just baguette days, without butter.
This writer, in a moment of no small humility, invested in some tickets for his family to football matches (football is cheaper) and rugby sevens. And he even abandoned his family, in a selfish —and remorseless— attitude, to spend an afternoon alone at Roland Garros. A dream come true.
However, some days are like this Thursday (1st), at home, with a baguette and French television programming. I couldn’t even get to the big screen in a fan zone, where the temperature would probably be 30 degrees Celsius.
Free-to-air TV has two channels available for the Olympic Games, with constant programming. But we have a problem, or “nous avons un problème”: as expected, French TV at the Paris Olympics always tries to highlight… that’s right, a French athlete.
Fencing, for example, is on every day. I think the Olympics will end and fencing will continue for another two weeks. French judokas usually advance to the finals or repechage, which also takes up a channel.
Therefore, watching the women’s artistic gymnastics individual all-around final could have been a drama. And it was. After all, we didn’t even have a French girl in the final.
But there was Simone Biles, probably the biggest individual name to come to Paris — along with Rafael Nadal, for different reasons. There was no way they were going to ignore Biles.
I started watching the final on my computer’s TV, with desperate jerks in the image—my laptop already has a few Olympics. But at some point the French channel left out the redhead with glasses playing table tennis and started broadcasting (late) the gymnastics.
From the beginning, this writer was rooting for Rebeca Andrade to reach the podium, but knowing that beating Simone Biles for gold in the individual all-around would be a difficult task.
When the French channel switched to gymnastics, I quickly noticed the delay in my favor. A rarity. I’m usually the guy who hears the goal first at the bar on the corner, then at home. However, I spent about 20 seconds in front of my computer, something like two complete Usain Bolt races with celebration.
So, I listened to the French narration, of which I understood two words (one of them was “oui”, they say “oui” a lot in sports broadcasts), and then I caught Luiz Carlos Júnior, on SporTV, with “emotion until the end”.
Tension grew with the scores from the third apparatus in the rotation, the balance beam, whose results took a while to come out. And, during one of these delays, the television cut to a BMX race, with a Frenchman competing.
My wife tried to calm me down with the laptop’s delay. Luckily, BMX races are short, the Frenchman did well, the crowd shouted “allez, les bleus” and the broadcast switched back to the gymnastics before the floor performance.
Wow, I was able to vibrate with Rebeca’s performance and just contemplate the force of nature that is Simone Biles. And 20 seconds before Luiz Carlos Júnior. Excitement almost until the end.
And as I finish these few lines wanting to watch the women’s surfing event full of Brazilians in Tahiti, I come across the TV showing an exciting 3×3 basketball match between France and Serbia. I’m tired, I’m going to root for Serbia.
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