2008 Beijing Olympics by Joseph Yick, IU

After I was selected to be the umpire in 2008 Beijing Olympics at 2007, I started to prepare myself from that time onward.  At last, the time came and I started my trip on July 31, 2008 to China.  The following is my journal for the month of August:

August 3 to August 10:  Qingdao

Since I was notified too late (e-mail from ITTF on July 31) that I could attend the Open Ceremony, I could change my flight schedule.  Therefore, I decided to follow my original plan traveling in Qingdao one week before going into Beijing.  In this trip, I visited city of Qingdao which was the co-hosted city of Olympics, mountain Tai and city of Qifu.  At Qingdao, I watched the Opening Ceremony on TV which I felt incredible for the performance.    I had a feeling that this Olympics would be one the greatest in history.

August 10 - Arrival

The big date came.  I arrived Beijing at about 10:30 am at Terminal 3 which was the new terminal built for Olympics.  The new terminal was very nice and comfortable. From my experience in 2005 Shanghai World Championship, I knew there would be a lot of volunteers in the terminal for reception. 

Once I walked to the luggage claim area, there were a lot of volunteers there.  They led me to the counter to activate my Olympic Identity Accreditation Card (OIAC) first. This was a very important procedure because the OIAC we needed to bring to everywhere while we were in Beijing.  With the OIAC, we could take all the public transportation free and could go into all the sight seeing points free too. After picking up my luggage, I went to Gate 3 which was the gathering point for all Technical Officials. There were cars lined up to send the officials to the hotel.

From the airport to the hotel, there was a special lane for all the Olympics related vehicles.  Therefore, I could arrive the hotel at about half an hour without any traffic jam. Of course, part of the reason was the Beijing government restricted half of the passenger car (Odd, Even date) came out everyday.

All the Table Tennis Officials stayed at a 4 stars hotel about 15 minutes driving time away from the playing hall. All the foreign umpires and officials had a single room. There was a counter in the lobby which had the volunteers on duty from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm. It was very helpful.

After checked in, I went to the playing hall to pick up my uniform and all the supplies. If the uniform was not fit, we needed to go to the Uniform Center.  There were tailors in the center to alter the uniform right away.

August 11

We had the umpire briefing this morning.  All the umpires started from the hotel at 7:30 am and took the shuttle to the hall.  This was the first time I met all the umpires.  Some of them were old friends and some of them were the first time. All of them were very friendly. 

When we arrived Peking University, we needed to go through the security check point.  We needed to use our OIAC to go through a security scanner to verify the identity of everyone.  After that, we needed to go through a metal detector and x-ray machine (same equipment in the airport).  There were security volunteers to search the shuttle bus thoroughly from inside to outside.  No one without the OIAC could go into that area.

When we arrived the gymnasium, we went to the playing field first to see the setup for the first 2 days.  The hall was not very big.  It looked little bit tight with 8 tables.  The lighting is good but it made the hall hot. The floor was excellent.  Compared with the hall in Shanghai for 2005 World, it was smaller and fewer seats. In overall, the playing field was very good design and well equipped.

After visiting the playing hall, we went to the media room for the umpire brief.  We got the handout (about 10 pages) for all the necessary information of first 2 days (including umpire schedule).  The referees told us the march in procedure and pointed out the important things that we need to take care such as Rule 51 (the very strict rule on advertising). There was also a brief about the racket control.  The good thing was we did not need to worry to get the rackets.  Most of the cases that the volunteers would take care of.  The best of all was we got our allowance after the meeting so we could have some money to spend.

Since we had a free day on August 12, I arranged with all the foreign umpires to have a local tour to Great Wall and Ming Tomb. At first, I thought there were around 5 or 6 umpires to go.  At the end, there were 17 umpires, almost half of the total, joined the tour.

August 12

We started our tour at 8:30 am and came back to hotel at about 5:30 pm. First we went to visit the Ming Tomb which was about 40 minutes from the city.  After that we went to a jade factory which the tour guide said it was the manufacturer of the medal for the Olympics.  We also had the lunch there.  In the afternoon, we went to the Great Wall which was about another 90 minutes from Ming Tomb. Everybody enjoined the trip.

At night, about 7 of us went to enjoy the Peking duck.  We took the subway from our hotel.  We arrived there at about 20 minutes. It was very convenient.

August 13 to August 23 – The Tournament

At last, the exciting events came.  The Team events started first. There were 8 tables for first 2 days.  The umpires separated into 2 shifts. Each shift worked about 5 hours with one to two team matches. 

The umpires need to arrive the gymnasium 90 minutes before match time. All the coaches needed to arrive the waiting area 30 minutes before match time to do the ball selection, Rule 51 check, shirt color check and the bench selection.  We checked the rackets over there in order to avoid any embarrassment in the court.  The players needed to arrive the waiting area 15 minutes before the match again for lining up and ready to march in.

The first session started.  The umpires and players marched in at about 9:50 a.m. The first accident happened. One of the groups entered into a wrong court and needed to “withdraw” from the court and re-entered to the corrected one.  Lucky, I was in the afternoon section.

I teamed up with Greg Dzioba of Canada.  The first match for us was the Men’s Team China vs. Greece. When we marched into the court, you could feel the pressure from the audiences. They cheered the home team from the beginning to the end of the match.  I could feel the different for doing the umpire between in China and USA.  In China, you knew you could not make mistake because you were on TV “live” all the time.

Since we could not start the match early, it must be ON TIME because of the TV live broadcasting. Therefore, we needed the players to warm up more than 2 minutes. Greg and I rotated to be the umpire and assistance umpire in the team match. 

In this tournament, the assistance umpire needed to control a timer which showed the game time on the big LCDs in each court.  All the audiences could see clearly how long the game last.  Therefore, if the assistance umpire forgot to switch “on/off” the timer, everyone would notice he/she was “sleeping” during the game.

In addition, there was a machine for 1 minute time out and 5 minutes time out in between the second and third match (doubles) and between the third and fourth match. The digit in the timer was big enough so that most of the audiences could see it clearly.  I think this machine is very good.

I believe most of us knew that the format of the Team Event was best 5 matches (4 singles and 1 doubles).  There was a little bit busy between the second and the third match because we needed to get the name for the doubles and gave it to the computer desk in order to put the name on the display monitor.

Some of the players went to warm up after the first match in order to prepare the doubles.  The warm up area was located at the other floor of the building.  Although there was TV to show the progress of the match, some of players did not come back on time for the doubles.  For the match of China vs. Greece, Kreanga was late for almost 3 minutes. Therefore, the next day, the referee decided if the players late for 5 minutes, the player would be default.  The umpire needed to hold the stop watch right after the 2nd match and started timer right away.

Everything was going very well.  The Women’s Team Final was on August 17 and the Men’s Team Final was on August 18.  There were a lot of high ranked Chinese government officers came to watch the games, for example,  Rogge, IOC President, Wu, President of China etc.  The security was very tight on both days.

There was one incident in the umpire field.  Originally, the umpire from Austria was chosen to be the umpire for Men’s Team Final, China vs. Germany. However, in the morning of August 18, there was a change in the schedule.  The umpire of Uganda replaced the umpire from Austria in the final.  Everyone was very surprised and did not know what was going on.  Later we found out it did not want the umpire from Austria to officiate at the Germany match.  Furthermore, the umpire from the same continent could not do the match.  I don’t know if it is reasonable.

After the Team Event, the Singles started.  Comparing to the Team, Singles was a lot easier and lighter.  Every one of us had some extra time to walk around Beijing.  We could not go the other gymnasiums by using our pass.  We needed to get an “Upgrade” pass from ITTF in order to see other events. However, this “Upgrade” pass was given to some VIP.  Thank to ITTF, we could borrow it when no one used it.  Greg and I got the “Upgrade” card and went to Olympics Park which was opened only to the event ticket holders or the Olympics officials.  We went to “bird nest” stadium and “water cube”.  We jumped over the fence and got into the track area of the stadium.  We took a lot of pictures there.  It was great!  After showing the pictures that we took on the track, everyone asked us how we could go out there.

When the event approached to the end, it only had one table for the tournament.  Therefore, we had more time for last couple days of the event.  For the last two days, I thought I finished all my duty because there were a lot of senior and experience umpires there.  At the afternoon of August 22, Greg knocked at my door and congratulated for me having the Men’s Final.  First I thought he was just kidding with me. I did not believe it until I saw my umpire number in the schedule sheet. I was excited and felt a great honor to be selected.  Although I had confidence for my performance, I was comparative inexperience in such a big tournament.  I hope I was chosen because my performance was recognized by the referee team.

August 23, the Men’s Final day came.  Besides I needed to prepare for the final, we had a friendship tournament with the hotel staff.  Both ITTF and hotel chose 8 players for the tournament.  The hotel set up 2 tables on the third floor. Each tables had 6 matches (4 singles and 2 doubles). David Jackson was the “Referee” and coordinator.  I was one of the players.  After 10 days of serious event, this tournament gave everybody a chance to relax.  Surprisingly, a lot of us were pretty good players.  We did not need to worry “illegal serve”, “coaching” were welcome anytime. There were no feelings at all.  What we could hear was laughing from everybody, both players and audiences.  It was JUST FUN.   The result was ITTF team won 7-1 matches.

After that tournament, I needed to prepare myself for the big match.  I was very excited even though I was only the Assistance Umpire of the match.  I read through the Umpire briefing material again.  Studying the Match and Official Handbook and running through the procedure in the mind.

We arrived the gymnasium at about 5:00 pm for the preparation.  The Bronze Medal match was at 7:30 pm. The final match started 8:30 pm.  These two matches were broadcasted nationwide even in a lot of Asia countries.

Most of the people could predict all the Medals for this event would go the China.  However, all the audiences were still very enthusiastic during the match.  Wolfgang from Austria, umpire of the match, and I were waiting at the backstage. 

On the 2nd game of the Bronze Medal match, Persson of Sweden got injury.  The team doctor tried to get into the playing field but was blocked by the volunteers because there were no one would allow going through the door without authorization.  After struggling for a while, the doctor went into it and the match was delayed for about 5 minutes.  

At last, the last match came. Everything went very smooth for the pre-match procedure.  When we started to march in, you could feel the heat of the audiences in the stadium. Since both players were from China, we did not need to worry about illegal coaching because there was no coach. 

If you watched the match on the TV, you might know I walked to the umpire in the middle of the game.  After that game, I walked to Ma Lin and kneeled down and did something on his foot.  I wonder if anyone knew what I was doing there. Even my friend in Hong Kong and Hungary called me regarding this matter.

Here is the answer:  In the middle of the games,  Wang Hao came to my table and told me the tapes on Ma’s socks for Rule 51 was peeled off.  He wanted me to re-tape the logo on the socks.  I went to the umpire and asked him if he wanted me to do it then or did it after that game.  The umpire said I should do it after that game.  Therefore, I went to Ma after the game and tried to tape the logo on the socks.

Although the match was not very excited, it was a great moment for my umpire career. After the match, everything seemed to be done.  However, I felt lost for a while because I didn’t know what I should do next.  I needed to face the reality again that I needed to come back to work.  I didn’t know how long I needed to take in order to go back my normal life.

August 24 was the Closing Ceremony.  We was arranged to watch the show at night. However, half of the umpire could make it because ITTF let us know too late and most of them could not change the ticket or needed to pay a higher fare. At 4:30 pm, we started from our hotel.  Most of us were wondering why we needed to start that early because the show began at 8:00 pm.

When we started our trip, we knew why.  First we needed to stop by to the security check point next to our hotel.  There we needed to wait for all the scheduled buses came by and finished the security check.  After about an hour, all the scheduled buses were escorted by the police cars to the stadium.  When we arrived the Olympic Park, we saw the police were lined up to make sure all the audience lined up into the correct lane to go into it.  All the officials for the Games were seated in one section.  There was free food and beverage including beer. Everybody enjoyed the arrangement and we took a lot of pictures for each other.

August 25 was the last day in Beijing.  Actually I left the hotel to airport early in the morning.  I arrived the airport at about 7:00 am and there were a lot of people leaving Beijing that day.   Since China International Airline was the official sponsor for the Olympic, she arranged one special section for the passengers from the Games.  The service was very good and we could check in very fast.

When I boarded the plane, I could only say “Goodbye” in my heart.

p.s. If anyone wants to take a look for the photos that I took in Beijing, you can go the “Face book” and search the group “2008 Olympics – Table Tennis”.