Monday, May 13, 2013

Sprinting the Panathenaic Stadium: Athens, Greece



If you had any kind of athleticism as a kid growing up, you probably at one point imagined yourself being in the Olympics. You and your friends on the street of your neighborhood, running down the street at dusk, racing towards the next red car parked on the street. As you pass the car, you throw your hands up in the air as you narrate your greatness as you set the new world sprinting record. I remember vividly having these thoughts as a kid. Fast forward twenty years later; I’m in Athens Greece at the Panathenaic Olympic stadium revisiting these childhood dreams.
            Walking into the solid marble stadium, you look up at the several benches that cascade up from the track. They had renovated the track for the 1896 Olympics and recently, they installed a rubber track. Most of the stadium is original with an occasional twentieth century fixing here and there. As I walked around the track looking up into the bleachers, I imagined the thousands of Greeks cheering a sprinter on as the made his way around the last turn of the race. The royalty, sitting with a cups of wine, too drunk to stand, making loud grunting noises as he cheers on his favorite athlete. It was cool to be walking exactly where such famous events had occurred.
            On the other side of the track was an archway which I followed a tunnel way to a small Olympic museum. It housed old posters from the Olympic games and their accompanying Olympic torch. 







            I walked back out the tunnel and back onto the track. I decided to get to the top of the bleachers so I sprinted up the uneven marble stairs. Making it almost three quarters of the way I got winded and walked the rest. At the top, I had a great view of Athens as well as a view of the Acropolis that sat on top of one of the largest hills in the city. Looking around I imagined again what the city what would have been like a century ago and visualized that the apartment complexes and sky rises were once open fields and small marble buildings and churches. While thinking of this I realized what I really need to do here. The purpose of these distant memories of childhood dreams and scenarios: I needed to take a sprint around the track.
Getting down to ground level, I took my lane. Crouching down in a stance, I look up at the track ahead of me. I hear the fake spectators in the stadium cheering me on. The loud roar of the stadium gets my blood rushing and my adrenaline pumping. The flag drops and I lunge into a sprint. I make my way around the first turn and imagine my opponents eating my dust as I straiten out into the second straight away of the track. Looking to the side at the empty bleachers, I visualize several Greeks, dressed like Little Caesar, shouting aloud and spilling wine accidently on their children next to them. As I make my way to the last curve, I start to get tired. I’m sweating profusely and am losing my breath. I tell myself “Derek, this is the Olympics. You can’t give up now!” I give the home stretch all I got. I can almost feel my phony competitors closing the gap behind me. I finally reach the finish line and I throw my arms in the air and feel the cheers, just as I did as a kid and I literally dropped to my knees and nearly threw up. Still, I had fulfilled that dream and finished the race. Walking out of the stadium, I looked back and took a last glance at the ancient stadium. Winded, I smiled as I felt like an athlete, leaving a bit of sweat on the track, just as several people had done generations before me.                  -DB























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