Gymnasts add their share of medals
This afternoon I attended the first day of the gymnastics competition here at the All Africa Games, and it felt like being at a school sports event. The hall was packed with Algerian kids, cheering and singing at the top of their voices, what sounded surprisingly much like those athletics songs we used to sing when I was a kid (which was quite a few years ago...). Not to mention that they almost lifted the roof when they broke into the Algerian national anthem during the medals ceremonies. It all made sense later on when Nounow, my faithful driver, told me that gymnastics was the second most popular sport in Algeria after football. It showed!
In many of the sports I've seen so far, the South Africans looked physically like the light weight kids on the block. Some African countries truly had giants in their teams. But with gymnastics I must say the Team South Africa members looked more, well, streamlined and toned than the competition.
So maybe that's why by the end of the evening they had won five medals - a gold, and two silver and bronze each to show for the their hard work in preparing for the competition.
I never got around to asking the question, but judging by their starry eyes and nervous laughter I think that for a few of the girls - most of them little tykes probably not older than fourteen or fifteen - it was their first outing on an international medals podium. It was great to see this display of pure 'opgewondenheid' - exuberance. Too many times now have I seen medals displays where the reaction of the athletes were rather blase, like, been there, done that, another day, another medal parade.
I took the last box of clappers - the promotional noise makers the guys from the 2010 marketing unit had brought along - with me to the gymnastics. When Nounow started handing them out he had to be escorted out of the hall by security, or else he was going to be stampeded by the crowds of children wanting a clapper. Thanks, brave Nounow!
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