The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are over. Viewers have witnessed new world records, triumphs, defeats, and the Olympic ideals of athletic excellence and world cooperation. Yes, there was a doping scandal involving equestrian horses, but horses are too simple to be held responsible for their actions. Plus: Who watches equestrian events anyways?
China, the host of the games, raked in the medals. Chinese athletes competing in weightlifting, diving, judo, gymnastics, and shooting have had the pinnacle of athletics, the Olympic gold medal, placed around their necks, while watching their flag being raised and their national anthem played before a stadium of fevered spectators.
Most of these sports are ones a typical Chinese person would never have a chance try. Ping pong, badminton, basketball and football (soccer) dominate the national sporting psyche. Diving? Few citizens of The Middle Kingdom know how to swim. Gymnastics? If that translates to avoiding obstacles while running to catch a bus perhaps the average Chinese Joe has experience (and could be the next medalist).
Inside a Shenzhen (China) Metro train. It looks tame: Looks can be deceiving.
There is an event, one that takes place each day all across China: A super competitive melee that sees thousand of combatants, athletic and otherwise, engaged in a fiery battle.
It a combination of sprinting and gladiatorial combat. Only the strongest and smartest win, and they will never receive a medal, ovations, or a playing of the national anthem. The lucky few, the winners, only receive a seat. Yes: The Subway Sprint.
Boarding a Chinese subway train (The Metro is it is known in China) is an extreme sports, as dangerous as UFC fighting done while bungee jumping. There are no rules, scribed or unwritten. It’s a dog-eat-dog sport, all for a cherished seat on a train, a chance to rest the weary bones.
It goes like this. The monitors on the subway platform show all and sundry the next train is due in two minutes. The athletes start jockeying for position, loose huddles form around the glass doors that will open in less than 120 seconds. The proper procedure is to queue to the right and left of the doors, allowing the subway passengers to exit out the middle. This rarely happens. If elbows were daggers the pushing and shoving would rend deep wounds.
They wait, preparing. They size each other up. Does he have what it takes? Can she take the gold? No, I’m better trained. There’s a slight push, perhaps a microscopic shove, as more competitors crowd the doors. They glance at the other queues. Is there a better one with less people?
The monitor clicks: One minute.
Then: A rush down the escalator, down the stairs. The queues expand, becoming a living, breathing force of their own. Energy, karma, ectoplasm, and a thousand auras swarm like rabid killer bees.
The light of the train illuminates the dark tunnel. A pleasant, recorded voice says in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English that the train is arriving, mind your manners. The crowd tenses like coiled snakes. Adrenaline floods the systems of a thousand competitors, aged 8 to 80.
Mark Phelps at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Hey Mark: I challenge you to the Shenzhen Subway Sprint. There will be no gold for you!
The train slows, the doors aligning with the station’s glass portals. You can almost hear the gnashing of teeth and creak of tensed tendons, ready to launch the athletes, full force, into the combative sprint.
With a double electronic chime the inner doors open. The crowd surges, a silent tsunami hitting an unsuspecting beach. The outer door, the platform door, the magic portal to a stainless steel bench and 20 minutes of relaxation, opens.
Then it’s over. The competitors, the strong and experienced, the sly and wily, are in the car and on a bench. You can almost see a colorful animated trail in their wake. The benches are full in three-quarters of a second. It’s over in a flash. A photo finish would never be fast enough to record the victors. The losers, knowing they never really had a chance, search for a rail to hold as the doors close and the train pulls away.
The Summer Olympics are held every four years. Subway Sprinting takes place a thousand times a day.
After three-and-a-half years I’ve seen a gold medal or two. At the right stop, on the right day, I can set world records. I leave the veterans in my wake, I’m a foreign interloper who know the game well. I’m sly, I’m a brute. I want a seat. This makes me dangerous, motivated.
Yes, the Olympic Games show the world athletic excellence. This excellence can be narrowly applied, like a high school education. Olympic Gold Medalists? I scoff. Bring me the hammer and javelin throwers, the skeet shooters, the weightlifters: I’ll show them competition. Put Mark Phelps in my arena, in my sport. He wouldn’t be in the top 100.
Images: Public Domain from Wikimedia, LA Times
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