5/27 - Travel Day!

Today was all about travel. We were downstairs by 7:15 to catch our train to the Geneva Airport, and it was clear that most of us weren't fully awake. Basically everyone slept on the train, trying to get a little more sleep before the rest of our day. Once we arrived at the airport, we checked our bags pretty easily and got through security with plenty of time to spare. There was some confusion about our gate, as there were two flights at 11:30 going to Athens and they switched our gate, but we found our plane and boarded right on time. The flight was quick, but the views were amazing. There were very few clouds in the sky, meaning we could see what we were flying over the whole time. In the beginning, we got some incredible views of the Swiss Alps, and it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. As we got closer to Athens, we had some amazing views of the different islands that make up the country. The air was so clear, and the Mediterranean was even clearer, which made the views all that more impressive.

 

 

 

Once we landed, we met with our travel guides, who brought us to the bus. We had a whole coach bus to ourselves, meaning we had plenty of space to lay out. We then departed from the airport to our first destination, Olympia. The home of the ancient Olympics was about a four-hour drive from Athens, so I got some work done on the outline we had to complete for our research paper. My paper focuses on sportswashing, a term that describes countries attempting to cover up their faults by manipulating public perception through sports. The issues these countries are dealing with harm their image and impede their interests, so they invest in sports to distract audiences from their faults. Some historical examples of sportswashing taking place are the 1934 World Cup (hosted by Fascist Italy) and the 1936 Olympics (hosted by Nazi Germany). Both these countries tried to confuse audiences by manipulating information to make themselves look better than they were. Recently, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China have all been suspected of sportswashing to cover up various human rights issues, which I plan to explore heavily in my paper.

I completed most of my outline before we reached our first stop, the Corinth Canal. Built in the 1890s, the canal cuts through the Isthmus (a word I didn't know existed before today) of Corinth and connects the Peloponnese Peninsula with mainland Greece.
 

After this, we drove a bit more before stopping at a restaurant. I cannot tell you what the place was called (because it was super Greek, and I have no clue), but the food was super tasty and very filling. It was very traditional Greek cuisine, with chicken skewers and pork platters, and it was all so amazing. After dinner, most people fell asleep for the final part of the bus ride before we finally arrived at our hotel in Olympia. It was a long and exhausting travel day, but the views were incredible, the food fantastic, and the sites will be well worth it tomorrow. I can't wait to see what Olympia has in store! 

May 26 - World Aquatics, CAS, & IOC!!!!

Another business casual day started off hectic as our fearless leader Dr. Kim gave us the wrong wakeup time the night before and then at 6am in the morning she texted us saying we needed to be ready an hour earlier than what we were told! Somehow it was the one day we were all on time shockingly, but some of us did have to scarf down our breakfast to make it out on time. We took a long uphill walk to World Aquatics which is in this beautiful house which I thought was pretty cool. We had a discussion with Executive Director Brent Nowicki, Sport Director Pere Miro, and Senior Manager of Digital Content and Events Luca Fasani. We discussed various things such as the difference between sports in America and Europe, the workings of World Aquatics, and their upcoming championships in North America in a few months. Nowicki was also an upstate native which was fun to make that connection to all of us since he is from Buffalo, New York.

Our meeting with World Aquatics did run over from what we expected so we were running late to our next meeting with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which was a far walk away. So, we hopped in some Ubers to make it to our next presentation. We arrived at CAS where we were greeted by William Sternheimer who is the Manager of Training and Education for CAS. He gave us a presentation on the history of CAS where he dived deeper into the beginning of why the sporting world needed CAS to determine rulings on sport related violations. We also learned about some of the most notable cases which varied in topics and learned about the two different types of cases which can be filed. After our presentation he showed us what a hearing room looked like which is basically a meeting room with many TVs so everyone can see if you’re online. Then he took us to a terrace which had a beautiful view of the city, Lake Geneva and the Alps.

Because we were running late in our meetings lunch was a very quick stop at the Coop store for grab and go lunch to eat on the run. For how cheap the food is it's pretty good quality coming from a grocery store as I had a pesto pasta salad and a spicy salmon onigiri. We hopped on the subway and ate our lunch before walking over near the Olympic Museum for our final stop of the day at the Olympic Study Center. We had 3 people speak to us in total about different sectors of the International Olympic Committee. We first spoke to Sinead Dowling on the Olympic Solidarity group which handles primarily the upholding of the Olympic Values and fund allocations for National Olympic Committees. Then Jocelin Sebastiani spoke to us about the processes of the Olympics regarding more event management and the host cities, while also touching on previous points on Olympic Solidarity. And then Diego Girod spoke to us about the archives and books that we have access to in the Olympic Study Center. He showed us some old artifacts from the first Paris Olympics and the smallest book in the Olympic collection.

Afterwards we accidentally left Luke and Rory at the subway station because they were too slow getting on the train. We went back to the hotel where we rested for a bit and then walked down to the beach to swim in Lake Geneva. The lake was pretty cold but we were able to have fun in the water and refresh ourselves. I then decided to do a solo dinner where I had a warm bowl of ramen after swimming in the cold lake before packing up my room for us to head to Greece!