One Dream One Nightmare One World
The Sunday Age
Sunday August 10, 2008
Around the world, millions celebrate as athletes start competition in China. Meanwhile, in a small part of eastern Europe, more than 1600 people are dead as two countries go to war.
THE Olympics opening ceremony declares that a time has come, but every Games now makes a separate announcement of place. On day one in Sydney, it was a triathlon at the Opera House, in Athens a shot put competition at ancient Olympia. Yesterday in Beijing, it was a cycle race from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City to the Great Wall. So were two long traditions, Olympic and imperial, joined. It invested the first day of competition with a sense of the epic.No one was disappointed. After nearly 245 kilometres and 61/2 hours of racing in sapping conditions that one retired rider described as "like a sauna" and another as if "having cream all over your body", six riders dashed to the line together. Spaniard Sammy Sanchez snatched gold, complementing Spanish victories in the last three Tours de France. Australia's Michael Rogers was gallantly sixth.Beijing authorities breathed a sigh of relief, and coughed only a little. After Friday's spectacular opening ceremony, they needed an encore, and with the Tour de France still fresh in all sporting minds, the cyclists ideally would provide it. Overnight rumours had it that this race would be postponed because of the infernal smog. As it happened, the air was cleaner than in a fortnight, which is not saying much.It would have been hard to see this race in anything other than an epic cast. It began at an ancient gate in Beijing, skirted Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, wound through the Olympic Green and past the Bird's Nest, then headed for what passes in China for the country. Here in this tropically lush and intensely cultivated landscape, there were fewer signs in English, fewer signs at all, but more rickshaws, more curious faces, more - one supposed - real China. The Italian riders clasped hands soon after the start, but for the first 80 kilometres, which was mostly flat, nothing happened. Sun Tzu, I'm sure, would have cautioned against headlong rushes. Two South Americans broke away, foolhardily, but for the rest, there was a little jostling, a little joshing, a periodic feint - one led by Mansfield's Simon Gerrans - and a lot of chit-chat.This was the Tour de France reconvened, not under sponsors' flags now, but nations'. This way, Tour winner Carlos Sastre became a domestique, a workhorse to carry a compatriot to gold, and so did Albert Contador, the winner in 2006. Australia's Cadel Evans would win if he could, but otherwise would run interference for another. This is the intrigue of road racing.At length, the valley narrowed and the road climbed, coming to the Great Wall at the Juyongguan Pass, reached through an arch beneath a world heritage-listed 14th century pagoda. If the riders had cared or dared to look from their handlebars, they would have seen the intergalactically famous wall on both sides, its ramparts snaking up and down precipitous ridges, with a fortification on every bend, a pagoda on every outcrop.Instead of the roar of traffic, there was the chirping of birds and crickets. In the press room, there was marble, lanterns and goldfish. A haze created a sort of legendary, ethereal effect, though in truth it was brought by the infamous pollution. None the less, the stage was a classic.So was the race, which began again here, no longer on a highway, but as seven tortuous loops of a rugged mountain pass between Juyonggan and Badaling, with grades as steep as 10%. Mere victory was too small-minded an ambition now; this was a place and a race to be conquered.Over and over, the peleton stretched out at the front and compacted again, meantime fraying at the back. There were no tomorrows, not as in a stage race, not even a next week, nothing for four years, and no prizes for fourth and down. So the riding was reckless and the rate of attrition high. Some were exhausted, some saving themselves for the time trial, one lost a wheel. One defaulter rode home to Beijing.Dutchman Karsten Kroon had predicted that it would be "a massacre"; it was for him. "I fooled myself into thinking I had a chance," he said. "I am wrecked."Two Slavs made a dash and were reeled in, then an Austrian, brave but doomed. Sastre and Contador pedalled furiously, then faded away, their job done, and Evans trailed off, too. A hero was needed, and Sanchez emerged. "The heat and humidity were extreme," he said. "There were five of us on the team. We were working as a unit. It's like a victory for all of us." But Belgium's Andy Schleck thumped the handlebars in despair.He'd come a long way and spent every kilojoule and left with no spoils, not even bronze. It happens in China.
© 2008 The Sunday Age