Some fools came to the Rio Olympics and opted to stay in their own hotel rooms, alone. Bold move, but I stayed in the Olympic media village, a newly built complex about 45 minutes away from the main Olympic park that will hypothetically be turned into condos in the near future.
It had its quirks — it wasn’t really a hotel, so the inexperienced staff took about three hours to place me in a room that didn’t have any pre-existing guests; the rooms and buildings all kinda smelled funny; and the cafeteria served cold cuts and chopped up hot dogs in cocktail sauce for breakfast. (Sadly, when the hot dogs disappeared by the end of the Olympics, I missed them.)
But it had one major benefit: Since it’s a soon-to-be-condo, the rooms weren’t individual rooms, but tiny two-bedroom apartments. That meant everybody had suitemates, and mine were Alex and Andrey, a television crew from Belarus.
Andrey was the reporter, and the one who speaks a little bit of English. He’s 27, and frequently wore a BELARUS zip-up. He was the middleman for all interactions between me and the Belarusian duo. Sometimes, we were able to communicate by repeating English phrases over and over, but most of the time, he opened his phone and typed what he needed to say into Google Translate from Russian to English. (“Google Translate is broken in Belarusian,” he explained.)
I’m used to Andrey’s English speaking voice — hesitant, and perpetually unsure. But then he let me watch videos of their TV reports broadcast back to Belarus, and I heard his real voice — strong, deep, confident.
Alex was the cameraman — according to Andrey, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko told Alex he was the nation’s best cameraman.
He was a maniac, almost perennially shirtless, and completely made out of muscles. We didn’t understand each other at all, so when left alone, he either talked to me via grunts and gestures or just in Belarusian, to which I was forced to nod and pretend I understood. He always urged me to drink more, and when drunk, he wanted to do two things: arm wrestle, or show me how to do various self-defense moves. Except he’s not really showing me how to do them — he’s just performing them on me. He’d tell me to shake his hand, and then twist my arm until it was in extreme pain, acting as if he had taught me how to do it but really just making my arm and hand hurt a lot.
On the first night in Rio, I found them sitting out on our room’s balcony drinking. They invited me out, and we attempted to talk about our jobs. Mainly, we just drank — they had cachaça, and a beverage Alex made at his home in Belarus. They typed in the name of it on Google Translate and showed me the phone, which said “bread wine.” I drank it. It’s good. We listened to Belarusian music. It’s good too.
They knew everything there is to know about America. But I only knew two things about Belarus: What the flag looks like, and its capital (Minsk.) So they showed me a YouTube highlight video of all the best things about Belarus. When a site they like a lot showed up in the video — like the capital’s hockey venue — they stopped the video to tell me all about it. Their faces watching this video are absolutely rhapsodic.
My third night in Rio, I returned to my room to high-pitched screams. I walked into their room to find the two of them in complete darkness watching table tennis. They were watching three-time world champion Vladimir Samsonov, a Belarusian, playing in the quarterfinals of the men’s singles tournament, and he was about to win. When he wins points, they stand up and scream. When he loses one point, Alex bangs his head against the wall.
Eventually, he won to advance to the semis, which called for a celebration. Alex and Andrey doled out very large pours of cachaça, including one for me. Andrey raised his glass: “Samsonov — champion.” We clinked, and drank. They poured again. I offered a toast to Belarus, which went over well. Repeat: “America is good. You are good.”
Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images
Alex measured my portion of alcohol by beginning to pour whiskey into a glass, wildly spinning around while pouring, then handing me the glass. It was a lot. I throw up. I didn’t eat in the room for the rest of my two weeks in Brazil because after that the room’s weird concrete smell reminded me of throwing up.
Andrey explained how important Samsonov is. At 40 years old, this is probably his last Olympiad. And while he’s won World Cups and European championships and finished second at the World Championships, he’s never medaled at the Olympics. I decided to go watch his semifinal matchup, his chance to finally win that elusive medal.
He was matched up against Zhang Jike of China. China is very good at table tennis. China is very, very, very, very good at table tennis. It has won 28 of 32 all-time table tennis golds, and the difficulty of making the actual Chinese table tennis team has led to a diaspora of world class table tennis players representing other nations.
Samsonov was clearly amazing at table tennis. Against Zhang, he took a defensive strategy, confident in his ability to return almost every shot; his plan was to do so and wait for Zhang to mess up.
On one point, Zhang worked the play to the point where he got to attempt a smash — a violent, powerful shot that would end 99.9 percent of rallies in ping pong history. But Samsonov got a racket on it. The ball skied 15, 20 feet in the air, and spun onto the table. Zheng wound up again. The second smash was even more ferocious than the first, but again, Samsonov returned it. The ball popped up even higher this time, and again curves onto the table.
Three times, Zhang walloped the ball with astonishing force, and Samsonov popped the ball to the heavens. On the fourth, Samsonov’s return nicked the edge of the table and bounced off — a point for Samsonov.
Unfortunately, this result happened rarely. Zhang blew him out, winning four games to one. Zhang lost the gold medal match to his Chinese countryman, Ma Long, but won gold in the team event. Meanwhile, Samsonov loses in the bronze medal game, and will likely finish his career without an Olympic medal.
Belarus won one gold medal, by Uladzislau Hancharou in men’s trampoline gymnastics. I saw it. His routine was brilliant, a cavalcade of impossible motions executed with absolute precision. When he finished his routine, he pumped his fist while floating 30 feet above the tramp. His victory dethroned a Chinese team that had won every Olympic or World Championship trampoline title for more than a decade, and made an entire nation proud. For four years, he will be Belarus’ grandest Olympic champion.
One night, I came home at roughly 2:30 and saw Andrey still awake. I asked how he was doing, and he sighed. “Work work work work work,” he said in a cadence reminiscent of, but probably not inspired by, Rihanna’s song of the same name. He explained that a Belarusian team had won bronze in canoeing, making his life infinitely busy.
Watching the Belarusians respond to their Olympians made me think about the way we watch the Olympics.
Would we celebrate a trampoline champion? Would a single reporter pass up sleep to report on a canoe bronze? Samsonov never won a medal, but is apparently close to a national hero. Would we even know his name in America?
The Olympics ended last week. Do you remember who Ryan Murphy is? He won three gold medals in Rio and set a world record in the 100-meter backstroke. The US won both gold medals in long jump and both gold medals in shot put — do you know any of the four people who won those medals? How about Kristin Armstrong, the three-time time-trial cycling gold medalist?
While it’s fun as a viewer to win almost everything and have an athlete contending in virtually every event, I prefer the way the Belarusians interact with the Olympics.
Each athlete and each sport at the Olympics is amazing. They have incredible skill sets and fascinating intricacies. A fan of a smaller country at the Olympics becomes acquainted with these fascinating worlds by following their few champions. Belarusians probably knew little about trampoline during the Chinese-dominated decade, but I imagine they’ve come to appreciate the preposterous aerial feats their tramp champ pulled off.
Meanwhile, the US dominated without most fans blinking. Our women’s basketball team was one of the best of all time, and even though they were incredible and it’s a sport we all know and love, their performance barely registered a blip.
On the last night in Rio, Alex and Andrey (again) drank with me. They urged me again and again to come to Belarus — “Alex say he wants you to stay with him. No. Stay with me. Everything free.” They gave me a hat. I told them I had no gifts to give back. They said it was OK. They gave me some sort of medal. I told them I couldn’t take it. “Coming to Belarus,” they said. “In Belarus, you are Superman. Coming to Belarus.”
Will I come to Belarus? It looks really beautiful, and Andrey and Alex are wildly nice, although Alex did kinda injure my hand with his self-defense moves. But it’s very expensive, and I don’t have a lot of time for vacations.
Even if I can’t make it, I’d like to thank Alex and Andrey not just for being my friends, but also for opening a window into how people from other countries perceive the Olympics — even though we didn’t speak the same language.
