Maybe it’s because they’ve learned to live life that bit faster, maybe it’s because they’re doing it for someone they love; in the Olympic cycling time trial, being a mother is no obstacle to getting on the podium.
The American winner, Kristin Armstrong, retired from competitive cycling in 2009 to have a baby.
Few people doubted that she would get back on her bike, though some might have doubted she would get back to exactly where she left off, winning her second straight Olympic time trial gold on Wednesday at age 38.
And Russia’s Olga Zabelinskaya, whose bronze was her second after Sunday’s road race, has two small boys at home of barely school age.
How do they manage it?
“My son has given me balance,” Armstrong said. “I can stop thinking about cycling.”
Just like Gold!
Zoe raised her coffee cup. “Drink to it?”
Kate smiled at Zoe’s bedraggled hair and her hopeful expression. For the first time, she realized that Zoe might be okay.
“Not with coffee,” she said. “Let’s have a glass of wine.”
Zoe looked panicked. “Wine?”
Kate nodded. “French people make it from grapes. It comes in red or white.
Zoe frowned, trying the feel of the word in her mouth. “Wine…”
“Oh come on, said Kate. “It’s off-season. Live a little.”
This above conversation between Kate and Zoe (page 172) takes place at a pub early on in their relationship, when they are just starting to become friends. It’s also, as I can remember, one of the first times (chronologically) we see any of the athletes deal with alcohol.
Here Zoe is literally panicked, while Kate is the bold, calm, and experienced one. Later once (subtle spoiler alert) the rule change is announced, Zoe drinks half a bottle to feel brave enough to think about what the change meant (188).
I guess, as with last week, I’m interested in what happens when extremely disciplined athletes indulge in normal-people pleasures— both scientifically and psychologically. Last week it was sex, this week booze. With booze it seems Zoe is immature for her years: first panicked at the thought of “breaking the rules,” even during the off-season, and when Kate’s initiating, and later drinking to escape a stressful situation.
While reading Gold should we see the consumption of alcohol (or other drugs for that matter, if it comes up [honestly I haven’t gone past 200]) by an athlete as a warning siren of desperation and/or emotional stress, at least more so than we do in real life or even in other works of fiction? If so I think Cleave has set up a handy literary trick for telling his readers when he characters are experiencing intense emotion but never having to steer far from reality (booze is commonplace, especially in Britain). — Sam Schlinkert
The men’s road race on Saturday will commence cycling competition at the 2012 London Olympics, but track cycling doesn’t begin until Aug. 2, next Thursday.
I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we met a bunch of celebrities. Vince Vaughn partied with us. Steve Byrne, the comedian. And at some point we decided to take the party back to the village, so we started talking to the security guards, showed off our gold medals, got their attention and snuck our group through without credentials - which is absolutely unheard of. I may have snuck a celebrity back to my room without anybody knowing, and snuck him back out. But that’s my Olympic secret.
— That’s USA women’s soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo talking about her time at the 2008 Olympics (via the ESPN).
I see a lot of Zoe, the fiery bicycle racer from Chris Cleave’s novel Gold, in the whole ESPN article, but also in this passage in particular. There’s the sense of world-class athletes having an “on” mode, when they’re completely focused on training, and an “off” mode, where partying knows few limits, and the extreme differences between them.
Solo covers her sexual escapade with the phrase “Olympic secret,” which implies a sort of “what happens in the Olympic village, stays in the Olympic village” moral code. Zoe too doesn’t want her nameless one night stand trumpeted (and calls her agent when she’s sees evidence on Facebook).
Finally there’s the use of the Olympic gold medals as a symbol of being elite or deserving of something. Solo and her friends use them to get past a guard (and in the beginning of the ESPN story Josh Lakatos gets into an house past a housekeeper) while Zoe’s mystery man finds and poses with her golds in photos as a symbol of what he’s conquered.
It’s interesting to see how Olympic-level training affects a person’s psyche, especially in regards to sexuality. Do you think it’s part of what makes Zoe so unhappy as of page 88? Does Hope Solo’s and the other athletes’ quirky stories in the ESPN story represent the fun side of the same coin?
OK guys. So it’s 3pm. Our plan on this here tumblr is for some of the nwk/beast editors involved in the book club to share their thoughts via submitted messages. You’ll see them coming through, published here on nwkbookclub. If you have a thought, or a question, that you’d like to add, just send us a message, reblog with a note, or submit your own post. If you don’t use tumblr and are viewing this on the front-end, you can leave a comment on the website (this post specifically), or tweet to @bookbeast. OK THEN. Let’s talk about GOLD.
Just on the other side of an unpainted metal door, five thousand men, women, and children were chanting her name.
A lot can be extracted from those 20 words. What do you think of the first sentence?
From the very beginning Cleaves establishes what he does best: filing a report on the texture of the professional sporting experience. An “unpainted” metal door - how fine that adjective is. He goes on to describe the bench Zoe and her coach are sitting on, which has “the blue protective film still on it.” You can practically smell fresh plaster. That’s what the Olympics are like: you spend a lot of time waiting in unglamorous rooms like this.
And then there is the fervent nationalism, the hero-worship, the crowds and power. All of this was turned into a symbol of Zoe’s inner state.
I thought Cleaves explored these two themes very well in the opening scene.
What’s your favorite part so far?
