Olympic diary: Playing the crying game

Maybe it's a cultural thing. Do Asians cry in sad movies? I think it safe to say that the guy next to me at the opening ceremony on Friday night would never have done so.

I'd noticed him early in the piece, and was fascinated by the way he produced single characters of the language's geometrically calligraphic script by typing combinations of keystrokes on his laptop. The complexity of it made me quail.

"Chinese?" I asked. "Korea," he replied.

So I looked to my left to study the expression on his face when the Korean contingent, North and South marching as one, entered the stadium. It was for many of us a highlight of the four-hour ceremony, a potent demonstration of the power of the Games to transcend political division.



As the crowd rose in ovation, many of us on the press benches did so too. I felt the hair bristle on the back of my neck and my eyes burned with barely suppressed tears as the athletes marched, expressionless and unwavering, through the tide of applause.

My Korean colleague was last to his feet, though, and seemed entirely unaffected by the fuss. I asked him to identify which of the two flag-bearers named in the programme was from the south and which from the north. He spent the next few moments, for me among the ceremony's most magic, correcting the spelling of their names by writing laboriously in my notebook.

By the time the 180 athletes had passed, I was ready for a right old blubber. I wanted to throw my arms around the man on my left but his stoic demeanour made me think better of it. We shook hands and he said "thank you" the way we might have if I'd just given him a job.

Cheap sentiment is in abundant supply here, of course, and will be for the next couple of weeks. Athletes won't just win but snatch glorious victories and there will be more agony and ecstasy than you can shake a stick at. And, even if I am by inclination and professional purpose a bit of a cynic, I am sure that I will find myself getting caught up in it.

I caught a glimpse of a 60kg weightlifter from the Federated States of Micronesia yesterday, bellowing at his body backstage as his quadricep twitched in spasm.

"Come on, leg!" he said as his manager furiously massaged. "You can do it!" I grimaced in sympathetic pain.

Anyone who can pass through these Games unaffected by the human drama on display probably needs to check whether they have a soul left. Anyone, that is, who can remember crying in The Sound of Music. I'm ready to bet that Climb Ev'ry Mountain didn't have them crying in the aisles in Seoul.

But if we soppy, sobbing Westerners threaten to get out of hand there will always be some in the foreign press corps to keep things in perspective.

The Australian papers were yesterday reporting, in tones of shock, a piece by Washington Post writer Sally Jenkins who plainly thought the Olympics should have started on Saturday morning.

After an hour and 40 minutes of watching Nikki Webster ("the little diva who stole our hearts," they're calling her here) Jenkins was desperate to hear someone scream, as Meryl Streep did when she played Lindy Chamberlain: "The dingo got my baby!"

"Let's face it," concluded the American, "there is nothing wrong with traditional Olympic ceremonies that a roving band of wild dogs couldn't cure."

Now there's a woman who never shed a sentimental tear. If she ever shows up where I am, I want a chance to take refuge - in a tank full of sharks.