Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Madrid 2016 by Buou

Drifting off

I’d got this Led Zeppelin song jammed on repeat in my head. The one that witters about Gollum and the ‘darkest depths of Mordor’. I tapped my foot on the floor of the metro in time with the imagined beat. Then a flurry of expectant beeps rang out, the door of the carriage swung closed and barely quarter of a second later I woke up 14 stops along the line after being tapped on the shoulder by a Good Samaritan.

I suspect that I am not the first person to drift off in the metro. Indeed, if you drag people onto the topic, you’ll discover some lively stories. One English teacher I knew claimed to have done twelve consecutive laps on the circle line after settling down for a nap after an early morning grammar class. Another friend fell into an alcoholic doze on the north platform of Tribunal Station shortly before the arrival of the evening’s last train and woke an hour later to find that everyone had gone home, locked up and ‘turned off the lights’.

My mind immediately spooled through the unwritten checklist of anxiety that will be familiar to any man who has just been startled from his alcoholic slumber. Trousers? Mobile phone? Wallet? Cash? Keys? Have I kissed anyone that weighs more than me? – No? That’s alright then. Hang on. Where the hell am I?

The answer was Estadio Olympico. I stepped gingerly out of the carriage, much like a snail emerging from its shell after a rainstorm, the doors twittered their beeps again and the last train of the evening whizzed away from the platform behind me.

Spain and the lost Olympics

I am not sure how many of you will have visited Estadio Olympico, unintentionally or not, but there really isn’t very much there. I stepped off the escalator and out into the cool Madrid night and into what could best be described as a muddy farmer’s field. The lights of the city glimmered far away as I put my foot into a puddle. The only company that I had was a deserted highway and a clump of freshly built rectangular buildings about half a kilometre away.

By all accounts there might be a good deal more activity swarming around the Estadio Olympico metro station if a senior member of the International Olympic Committee hadn’t got the buttons for Paris and Madrid confused during the voting process to elect the host of the 2012 games. Alex Gilady, an Israeli delegate, suggested to the press in the wake of the vote that ‘one member made a mistake and voted for Paris instead of Madrid.’ He concluded that if this error hadn’t occurred, ‘Madrid would have won.’

In the event Madrid didn’t win. London did. Incredulous, the Spanish organisers sharpened their pencils, postponed their budgets, stripped the blood red ‘Preparados Para Ti’ flags from the Castellana and vowed to be back and in even better shape next time. Mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, demonstrated the council’s grit declaring to the IOC that the city will work in the future to, ‘improve all aspects that need improvement.’ Their commitment to Madrid’s Olympic project was total.

A question you might want to raise is, why? €10 billion for an international party, a barrage of anonymous sports and the chance to squeeze as many people onto your public transport service as possible. For all of this you have to dig up half of the city and tax the population until their teeth fall out.

Political piggybacking

That would be the cynic’s view, but I happen to be persuaded by rather a different one. No longer on the periphery of world affairs, Madrid happens to be one of the few global cities pumped full of adrenaline. Three of the world’s biggest companies now have their headquarters in Madrid, 190 different nationalities are said to be represented in the city and in pure geographical terms it is growing at the alarming rate of one of Mr McGregor’s prized pumpkins. Hosting the Olympics would give a buzzing city the perfect opportunity for an indulgent spot of deserved international peacocking.

Not just that, the games also provide Ruiz-Gallardón with the perfect catalyst to push through his pragmatic redevelopment programme. Would you be happy if your road was going to be ploughed upside down and inside out and a pneumatic drill was going to thump merrily away for ten hours each day? Thought not, though you might be a little more sanguine if you knew that some day in the future Paula Radcliffe, Haile Gebreselassie and Paul Tergat might just be running along it.

It’s clear that Madrid’s chances of winning this time around remain slim. Barcelona 1992 is not so distant a memory and more of a problem is the fact that London, another European city, is hosting the next games in 2012. I imagine that the competing candidate cities, Rio, Tokyo and Chicago will already be scribbling down their objections of the IOC’s pro-European bias.

So where does that leave us then? Madrid’s a city in its pomp, London was a worse choice for 2012 and in 2016 my money is going to go on Rio and a first South American Olympics. And as for me in this article; I’m still stuck in a deserted field on the outskirts of Madrid, with a hangover beginning to kick in and wondering how the hell I am going to get home.