After already being in Paris for over a week, I could finally watch my first Olympic sports competition in person on Saturday, which was swimming. I have been checking the ticket website for any swimming session over and over again but never found any tickets within my price range. However, last week, Dr. Neirotti told us that her daughter bought the cheaper ‘restricted view’ tickets, which were, in her case, located right at the bottom of the stadium where she could see the athletes close by. Therefore, I took the chance and got one of those ‘restricted view’ tickets for myself too.
What should I tell you now? Those were the best seats I could have purchased, and everyone around me shared that opinion. We were in the first row of the stadium, right where the athletes walked in and out for their races, so we had a close-up view of all these world-class athletes. The ‘restricted view’ label for these seats only came from the ‘Anti-doping’ table in front of us, where the athletes also picked up their credentials after the races, but we still had a decent view of the pool. However, the best part always came after the medal ceremonies when the medal winners did their lap of honor, and we high-fived many of them while some could even take quick selfies with them.
It was also amazing to see that the stadium was packed and everybody had a good time there. One of the highlights was the 800m freestyle final of the women, where Katie Ledecky could win her 9th Olympic Gold medal. In the same race, her teammate Paige Madden became third and got completely overwhelmed with emotions after the results were official. Another scene that personally broke my heart was the disqualification of the American swimmer Alex Walsh after she had placed third in the Individual medley. Seeing her emotions from the first row was a hard pill to swallow, and as an athlete myself, I cannot even comprehend what she must be going through mentally.
Even though swimming is usually not my primary sport to watch, this was an incredible evening with many different emotions that I will never forget.
