Summer of 1992, Barcelona, revisited
The Agbar Tower, Segrada Familia and Port Olympic towers as seen from Parc Guell.
Beautiful dusk at Stiges,a seaside resort town an hour from Barcelona; Segrada Familia in Barcelona is Antoni Gaudi’s grandest creation.
Olympics Marathon. So, we started from the KM38 mark and ran uphill to Montjuic where the Olympics Stadium is located. Some 2km into the run, I caught up with Hwang Young Cho, the 1992 Olympics gold medallist from Korea. He was pushing a pram with his son in it and his wife was running next to him. We took a photo together. Eventually we were led into the tunnel that opens up into the arena of the Olympic Stadium. What a feeling!
How often in life can a non-athlete like me walk into an arena like the stadium? We ran a lap around the stadium and finished the run at the same spot as the athletes did.
I achieved my aim of coming to Barcelona Marathon when I managed to take a
photo withthe three medallists: Hwang Young Cho from Korea, Koichi Morishita from Japan and Stephan Freigang from Germany.
From there, we were led back to the start, this time via an escalator and I saw a man who was obviously French — he was dressed as the Eiffel Tower. It was about 2m tall and made of metal. A breakfast awaited us and there was coffee (very important for me), pastries, juices, isotonic drinks and lots of tangerines from the Mediterranean.
After the run, I tried to look for the statue of Hwang in front of the stadium. I was also so inspired by the Olympics that Ivisited the Olympics Museum situated next to the stadium. There was a series of footprints
cast in bronze of great athletes leading to the museum. They were of Edwin Moses, Sebastian Coe, Sergey Bubka, Michael Johnson, Nadia Comaneci and Mark Spitz to name a few.
In the Olympics Museum, I learnt the role of Joan Antoni Samaranch who was the International Olympics Council president from 1980 to 2001. He is a native of Barcelona and was instrumental in bringing the Olympics tothe city.
MARATHON DAY
The Barcelona Marathon started at 8.30am at Plaza Espana. Two gentlemen, both named Juan from Claudia’s running group, sent us to Barcelona city in their car.