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USA DIVING NEWS |  |
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July 28, 2007 Pan Am Games: Adversity won't get to this team First, the flight to Brazil gets turned around and the team arrives a day late. Then, the weather changes from a nice, sunny 80-plus degrees the first couple days the team’s here to cold, rainy and windy weather during competition (It is winter here, after all. The 80-degree days were nice, but that’s above normal this time of year.). There’s also the Brazilian crowd. It’s a loud group, known to cheer loudly for any of its own, of course, but the fans have also cheered wildly anytime another diver misses a dive and have booed the Americans and Canadians quite a bit. So has it gotten to Team USA? Apparently not, as the U.S. has six medals in six events, with one day of competition still to come. ----- Sightseeing in Rio With the schedule the way it is, there hasn’t been a lot of time for the team to do much other than practice and hang out in the village. You really can’t walk around here, so you need to take a bus or a cab almost everywhere. With traffic and bus schedules, that can take quite bit of time. We ventured to a nearby mall on Tuesday night, but between waiting for the bus and sitting in traffic, it took almost an hour to get there. So, when the USOC called team leader Jim Stillson on Thursday to ask if we might be interested in a police-escorted tour the Consulate was organizing to Christ the Redeemer on Friday, we jumped at the opportunity. The other tours we’d heard about last six hours, most of which is travel time. With the police escort, we could make the trip in about half the time and still get back before the competition started. Not everyone could go, since some divers were still competing, but Jim, Matt Scoggin, Haley Ishimatsu, Mary Beth Dunnichay and I met at 8:45 in the Village and joined up with people from the USOC and some other NGBs and headed up to Corcovado to see one of the newest Seven Wonders of the World. It’s a beautiful drive up there, going along a winding tree-lined road in Tijuca National Forest, the largest urban forest in the world. The views are spectacular as you begin climbing the mountain and see Rio below you. Once we got to the monument, we got out and climbed a bunch of stairs up to Christo, as he’s referred to here. It was a really remarkable sight, and the views were tremendous as you look down upon the city, the mountains and the ocean. It was cloudy and overcast when we were there, and it was still beautiful. I can’t even imagine how pretty it would be on a perfectly clear day. We took a few pictures, headed down to a souvenir store and then chatted with some of police escorts, who let Haley and Mary Beth pose for pictures on their motorcycles. We fly out of Rio on Sunday evening, but there should be time in the morning for the rest of our group to go see Christ the Redeemer if they want to. And they should. It was truly a sight to remember. - Jen Lowery,
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