We left my in-laws in one hotel and hopped a train to Lucerne, two hours away. We had a meeting. Or, as I explained it to them, “When they heard your daughter was coming to Switzerland, they cleared their schedules and we’re meeting with some serious higher ups. She’s a big deal is what I’m saying.”
Because she is. This is how you know.
We went to the Olympic Studies Center today. They’ve got signs and everything. We met with two librarians and archivists. And then we met with a grants specialist.
They explained their impressive library, signed us up for their newsletter and gave us remote access to their online catalogs. (Which are incredibly extensive. I have so much new information to write about now.)
Being the official archive collector of the Olympic Games, they’ve got, well, everything. Books you can’t find online. (I’ve been looking after drooling over some of what we saw today.) There are proposal reports from every city that has bid to host the Games. Research from every corner of the world. And, as they say in French, Bien plus encore.
I wrote pages and pages of notes. I also took a lot of photos of books I want to find and read. There were two whole shelves of books I want to find, so I just shot video of those.
I’m not an Olympic scholar — my lovely bride is a globally renowned Olympic scholar — but they are making it easy, and tempting, to give it a try.
We took our meetings just casually sitting by the torch from the 2024 Paris Games. I was sitting three feet from this.
I could have written more notes in the meetings, but my mind did wander and wonder: how much does that torch weigh?
The library closed at 5 p.m., and the people there couldn’t have been more charming. We’ll be back. (If we can convince the dean this is a business trip, we’ll be back often!)
There’s a museum next to the Studies Center, but the museum was closed today. On this beautiful — and extremely warm! — day today, though, we enjoyed the sculptures and displays on the grounds. Here’s one of my obvious favorites.
There’s also an Olympic-caliber track, which was installed by the people who actually supply the Olympic track. They had a 100-meter straightaway.
If you can see those little lights on the left (the ones on the right are just regular lights) they are synched up to Usain Bolt’s world record at Berlin in 2009. Each lighting at his pace, so you can see how suck you are compared to God’s greased lightning.
His world best is 9.58 seconds. The lights are synched to that. You do OK on that first light. Probably because you initiate the thing while he had to react to the starter. It’s over at the second light. It’s LAUGHABLE at the third. (Seriously; I was laughing.)
Anyway, we did a few starts, and then the Yankee decided to do the whole 100 and I timed it. So I had to do the whole thing too, and she timed it. I’m happy to say that Bolt, the fastest human ever, at his peak form at 23 years of age, with the finest tech of the day, is less than twice as fast as me, a currently untrained, non-sprinter, wearing linen slacks, a billowy polo and high tops.
About three-quarters of the way down, the thought occurred to me: You’re 48!
Literally in the next heartbeat my left hamstring said: I’m 48!
So now I’m limping.
I did it in 17.4, though, having pulled up in those last few strides. It might have otherwise been 16+, at this age and in those conditions with no training and casual street wear. I’ll take it.
(You also start under a pole vault display, which shows the Olympic and World Records for the men and the women. They get really, really high.)
Anyway, now I am going to do some Olympic writing … writing about previous Olympics, more precisely. It’ll be great fun, just like today
