The following statement should not come as a surprise, as I imagine it has become evident through my Olympic blog posts so far:
I am a huge sports fan.
I grew up wanting to broadcast the Super Bowl. I religiously followed my favorite teams and, for three years, wrote annual football preview magazines that filled 200 pages. I never sold them, and I never published them online because “online”, at that point, barely existed. But I loved writing them, just as I loved every way I could find to soak in the world of sport.
Back then, I longed for the moments when I could watch, in person, the best athletes in the world.
I still remember, in the early Nineties, going to the Meadowlands in New Jersey to see my hometown Nets take on the Chicago Bulls – and, of course, their superstar, Michael Jordan. That night His Airness played an average game (for him) but still provided a handful of highlights that dazzled the crowd. I savored that game because, for one night, I got to witness the best.
This past Saturday, covering the 2016 Summer Games, I experienced that again – twice.