The rest of our days at the shooting venue were very fun and very memorable. We witnessed so many medal ceremonies and I'm shocked at the different reactions. There was an Indian guy who had said on his profile that he got into the sport for the fame of it (yeah....okay...) and then when he finally won his first gold medal- the first medal EVER for India in an individual sport- he could barely be bothered to give more than a three-word answer to the questions asked of him. "I dont know what i'll do when I get back to India," he said, when asked with how he feels returning to India as a hero. "I don't really like to be hassled." Seriously??! You just won a medal, and a GOLD, at that, and you dont want to be hassled? Okay, lets trade. You give me your medal and I'll be the one who's hassled, how about that?! :)
The most exciting even however came at the very end. The very last shot of the very last round of the very last match to be exact. Some of you may have heard how American Matthew Emmons lost the gold medal in one shot. It was a scandal! Okay here is the story: Emmons was in first place the entire round (which is a series of ten shots ranked 0-10.9-- 10.9 is a perfect shot). He was 3 points ahead of the second place shooter, which for shooting is a lot. This meant that he could realistically shoot a 6.7ish and still get the gold. For a shooter at this level, a 6.7 is unheard of- it would be a tragedy to get that kind of score. So he pretty much had it in the bag. He's always the last person to take his shot in the round, so here he was in the last shot waiting to get that gold. And he shoots, and we wait for the score to pop up....and it's a 4.4. A 4.4!!! Impossible!!! So, he moves down to fourth, and the Chinese scoop up the gold. It was such a scandal! In interviews with him and his wife (fellow shooter from the Czech Republic Katerina Emmons- see my previous blog for info on her) they both said that some things just aren't meant to happen, and he pulled the trigger just slightly too hard just slightly too early and thats the thing with this sport- its so intricate and mm count so much. There's always London, he said.
So witht that event to end our Olympic experience, we were all pretty satisfied with our time at the shooting venue! :)
Here are a few random shot of us working: (well, "working":)
Taking a break and playing with the ONS scooter...its so fun!
Look at those journalists in action
On to the mixed zone to be a part of the interview madness- the really cool thing about shooting vs. a more popular sport such as basketball is that since shooting is not as popular, there was never a swarm of media and therefore we were all able to ask a lot of questions and actually interview the athletes. It was quite an experience to talk to someone who just won an Olympic medal!
The finals hall of the venue
So after shooting ended, I was very excited because Fabien arrived the next day! I went to the airport to pick him up and we took the very nice and new metro line back to Beijing! We've spent the past week getting settled in and buying some stuff for the apartment that we have rented so as to make it a little more like home thousands of miles away:) We also bought bikes to explore the city with and to make transport a little easier. Everyone in Beijing has a bike! It's so cool:) The day after he got here, we went to see track and field in the Birds Nest and we had lower level seats 7 rows from the track! It was so cool! We then went to boxing that night and saw France kick China's butt:)
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