Editor’s note: Josh George is a junior in communications. He competed in track and field at the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. He kept a journal and agreed to share it. This is his last installment.

10/5/04

When I last left you, our hero – or some scrub who runs fast (however you want to look at it) – was vegetating on his bed resting up for a 200-meter final. I apologize for such a long gap between that chapter of the adventure and this one, but as you will soon see, the way the journey ended did not leave me in the mood to reflect on what had just happened.

So let’s jump right in where we left off. Sept. 27 was my last day of competition. I was scheduled to run the 4×100 relay as well as a 200 final. I was pumped. Relays are always fun to run, and I thought I had a great chance of winning my 200. I felt a good day coming.

HA, HA, it didn’t quite play out as planned. Here’s the play-by-play: I went to bed early Sunday night, Sept. 26). I knew I needed a good night’s rest because I had the 4×100 early the following morning. I woke up the morning of the races at around 6:30 a.m., excited and ready to go. I got my gear and bolted out the door with my roommate and relay teammate.

It was about this time that the shit hit the oscillating ceiling device. I had just stepped one foot out the front door when one of our team leaders informed me that we were scrapped from our relay. It made sense that we were; I mean three of our four team members had gotten pretty beaten up in the marathon the previous day, but it still would have been nice to have found out that we weren’t running before I had forced myself out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn.

All right, no problem. No relay meant more time to rest and prepare for the 200 that evening. Do you know how freakin’ hard it is to relax, stay loose, and do nothing when you have to run a huge race in eight hours? You can only take so many trips to the cafeteria and check your e-mail so many times before you go crazy.

The day was not lost, I kept telling myself. I shall be triumphant over the forces of the day.

HA, HA, I was wrong. Long story short: I got in my usual warm-up, did my usual race prep and proceeded to run the worst race of my summer. I guess I hadn’t gotten the memo about saving the best for last. Or maybe it never clicked that the whole reason I didn’t run the marathon was so I could do well in the 200. Sometimes the gods enjoy making you suffer.

The race from the gun to the line: Bang, gun goes off, again I was asleep on the line (I was thinking too much about how I needed a solid start). No worries, I’ve got more real estate to work with than in the 100. That was my thought before I missed my first and second stroke transitions (changes in the frequency and power put into each push) and then found myself coming off the turn close to the back of the pack. I spent the last hundred meters having my ass handed to me by racers from Korea, Kuwait and Thailand.

“It was bad.”

That’s all I was able to tell the reporters waiting at the finish line.

Closing Thoughts

Closing Ceremonies is a time of celebration and joy. Just not this year – not in Greece.

Athens had been struck by tragedy the day before. A busload of high school students from northern Greece making its way to Athens to watch the events of the final day crashed, killing seven (five more died later) and putting many in critical condition.

It was a sad day for Greece, I admit, but then the wonderful people of ATHOC (the organizing committee) decided to make it a sad day for the rest of us. They hastily decided to cut out the entertainment and celebration portion of Closing Ceremonies.

Now I should explain that, by this point in my trip, I had come to the conclusion that the Greeks are a little lazy and backward in anything they do.

At restaurants, you get two menus for 10 people and zero time to look at the menu before the waiter comes to take your order. After you do order drinks, entrees are brought sporadically, whenever the chef finishes making them or the waiter feels like bringing them out. Then you are forced to sit and fall asleep as your waiter ignores your attempts to motion him over in order to procure the bill.

Outside of restaurants, cars have the right of way in the narrow city streets, and drivers wouldn’t think twice about running over tourists from the United States (the Greeks really don’t like Americans).

And there are no such things as lines. People bum rush cafeteria counters and entrance gates with no regard for those around them. It really is a different culture, one that I tried to respect, but after nearly getting run over by cars and crowds of people one too many times, decided it wasn’t worth it. They’re backward.

So the ATHOC people decided to cancel all the festivities planned for athletes who had come in from around the world because of a severe bus accident that was caused by the ridiculous lack of traffic laws in Greece. It was a very sad accident, and I do sympathize with all of the families involved, but it is even more of a tragedy that accidents such as that one occur annually in that country, and nothing is ever done to ensure that they won’t happen again. So instead of a moment of silence during the Ceremonies to commemorate the lives that were lost, they were backward in canceling a large portion of the Ceremonies.

GOODBYE, ATHENS

The original plan of departure for the U.S. team charter was to be at 4 a.m. on Sept. 30.

We loaded up all of our bags at around 3 p.m. on the 29th, and then spent the rest of the day shootin’ the breeze and trading our USA gear for gear from other countries.

At midnight, 300 U.S. athletes drowsily boarded a massive line of buses waiting to take us to the airport, waving sadly at the village we had spent three wonderful weeks living in. We got to the airport at around 1:30 a.m., moving to our gate a half hour later, where I promptly fell asleep on the floor.

Well, around 6 a.m. I was woken up and told to board the plane. Not thinking much of it, I did what I was told and then fell back asleep on the plane. Again I was woken up, about two hours after I had fallen asleep, and was told that the plane hadn’t gone anywhere. There was something wrong with the plane and the Athens airport did not have what was needed to remedy the problem.

We had to deplane and await further information.

We were told we had to go back to the village and would not be leaving until sometime the next day. Again on the buses, and again with the waving, only this time it was in bitter welcome of a village in a city that we should have left. Other than the Japanese and a few other straggling nations, we were the only ones in the village.

The only things in abundance besides a grouchy group of Americans were McDonald’s and liquor purchased in the duty-free shop at the airport. A fiendish combination if there ever was one. Let me just say that for many it would have been a healthier night had they ripped out their livers, dragged them through the mud and then had them placed back in their bodies without cleaning them off. Wondrous evening.

By noon the next day, we were back on the airplane and taking off. Goodbye Greece, don’t know if I will ever be back again, at least not to the mainland (I heard the islands are nice).

But you guys put on a magnificent Paralympic Games and gave me three amazing weeks that I will never forget.

For one final time, adieu.