Moscow epilogue and reflections
Our youngest daughter seems to have decided she is
1. a homebody and never wants to travel abroad again
2. a country girl (but we already knew that)
3. really lucky to live where there is good water, few car fumes, and very few cigarette fumes
4. happy that she will not have to use a squat-over-a-hole toilet inside a building again in the near future
5. going to learn Russian in earnest because the new boy at fencing is from Russia and she will be in love with him forever and this one is not just a passing crush even though he smokes
My weapon bag did arrive, this afternoon, and the tournament results are finally posted, at http://www.veteransfencing2009.ru/results/Overall/epee%20women%2050-59.txt, where you will see that I tied for 17th.
I will have a better seed next year, if they do the seeding the same way they did this year, which is to use the results of the previous year's championship to assign seeding. All the people without a result from last year are seeded randomly below them. This seems a little odd, because the first-timers are much more likely to be younger and faster, but I have a hard time coming up with a more fair way to do the seeding. (I say that despite knowing that there were the same number of people born in 1959 as 1949 in my event, which suggests that the age distribution is pretty even across the decade, and that maybe a the years don't make that much difference -- a heartening thought.)
There was a daily medal count from the team captains, and I couldn't decide whether it was jingoistic or patriotic, or maybe just team-building. The USA had the most medals, with 10. Russia and Great Britain each got 9 medals. No Americans got medals in my event, where our highest placement was 8th.
Perhaps, though, we should count medals in terms of percentages... where 100% of Austrian fencers won gold medals. The USA had a full contingent, which means about 20% of our fencers got medals, and only 2% got gold.
Interestingly, the only team with any Asians (other than any Russians from the Asian part of the country) was Japan, and there was no team from Africa. I also did not notice a team from South America, but they might have had people in other weapons. Thus, the only people of African descent, or of Asian descent who weren't Russian or Japanese, were on the US team. (We also had a former Argentinian, so we had all the inhabited continents covered.) As Mark commented, our multi-ethnicity is both America's strength and its weakness. Actually it made me feel kind of good about our nation of immigrants.
I almost forgot: I have discovered the secret of how to improve international relations, and it is... toilet paper.
We had been warned to bring our own toilet paper because Russian toilet paper resembles sandpaper. The hotel's TP was pretty much like America's, but at the venue it was gray and fairly rough, and when I used the locker room there was only a scrap left (though at least the toilets in the athlete area were regular sit-on toilets). Mark ran back to the hotel to bring our roll of TP because of this shortage, and I proceeded to share a lot of it with folks from other countries. Instant good international relationships, no sh-t!
1. a homebody and never wants to travel abroad again
2. a country girl (but we already knew that)
3. really lucky to live where there is good water, few car fumes, and very few cigarette fumes
4. happy that she will not have to use a squat-over-a-hole toilet inside a building again in the near future
5. going to learn Russian in earnest because the new boy at fencing is from Russia and she will be in love with him forever and this one is not just a passing crush even though he smokes
My weapon bag did arrive, this afternoon, and the tournament results are finally posted, at http://www.veteransfencing2009.ru/results/Overall/epee%20women%2050-59.txt, where you will see that I tied for 17th.
I will have a better seed next year, if they do the seeding the same way they did this year, which is to use the results of the previous year's championship to assign seeding. All the people without a result from last year are seeded randomly below them. This seems a little odd, because the first-timers are much more likely to be younger and faster, but I have a hard time coming up with a more fair way to do the seeding. (I say that despite knowing that there were the same number of people born in 1959 as 1949 in my event, which suggests that the age distribution is pretty even across the decade, and that maybe a the years don't make that much difference -- a heartening thought.)
There was a daily medal count from the team captains, and I couldn't decide whether it was jingoistic or patriotic, or maybe just team-building. The USA had the most medals, with 10. Russia and Great Britain each got 9 medals. No Americans got medals in my event, where our highest placement was 8th.
Perhaps, though, we should count medals in terms of percentages... where 100% of Austrian fencers won gold medals. The USA had a full contingent, which means about 20% of our fencers got medals, and only 2% got gold.
Interestingly, the only team with any Asians (other than any Russians from the Asian part of the country) was Japan, and there was no team from Africa. I also did not notice a team from South America, but they might have had people in other weapons. Thus, the only people of African descent, or of Asian descent who weren't Russian or Japanese, were on the US team. (We also had a former Argentinian, so we had all the inhabited continents covered.) As Mark commented, our multi-ethnicity is both America's strength and its weakness. Actually it made me feel kind of good about our nation of immigrants.
I almost forgot: I have discovered the secret of how to improve international relations, and it is... toilet paper.
We had been warned to bring our own toilet paper because Russian toilet paper resembles sandpaper. The hotel's TP was pretty much like America's, but at the venue it was gray and fairly rough, and when I used the locker room there was only a scrap left (though at least the toilets in the athlete area were regular sit-on toilets). Mark ran back to the hotel to bring our roll of TP because of this shortage, and I proceeded to share a lot of it with folks from other countries. Instant good international relationships, no sh-t!