Denis Kiely (IRL) reports on the build up to the 2008 Paralympics from an Irish perspective:

Sailing Stuff

What we're here for, so 1st things etc. Sonar on the water yesterday - very light wind, maybe 2-3 knots [3.5 to 5.5 Km/h]. Hot, and we baked! Very strong tides - maybe 3 Kts +.

The fear about Qingdao was/is that it would be so light that races would not be started [Min 4 kts are required to start a race]. But most days we have had good wind and today again there was a steady 8Kts on the water - so we keep our fingers crossed for next week when the racing begins. The Sonar was hauled today for measurement, weighing etc. - all the bits of string had to be undone and the mast taken out - and then put back in again - and all the bits of string tied up again.

Maria was out at 8,00am under the boat polishing the hull - and had the whole job done when we arrived down at 10 - 10.30. Someone passed the remark ' a woman's work ...' but being a reformed - well partially reformed - MCP I immediately stopped him and instead explained what had kept us busy and unable to arrive any earlier. That seemed to diffuse the situation??? We also promised to do better in future!

The Skud hit the water for the first time today. Amy and John were out with about 7/8 other boats. Conditions were idyllic and they had a very satisfactory first sail pacing and practising with the others. The usual teething problems - maybe a shorter bit of string here, longer there, etc., but nothing major. A great feeling to be on the water sailing after the initial trauma of discovering the badly damaged boat in the delivery container.

Three days left to competition time and things tightening up a bit - so we went out of the village last evening for a meal - and to restore our blood alcohol levels - moderately - really! Mac regaled us with tales from earlier days which included characters such as 'fightin Kiely' - definitely no relation, 'Luigi', 'mad jack', 'jerry the mouse', the 'Bandon car', and the 'hole in the wall gang', and lots of motorbikes!! - I swear.

Richard was sitting there pop-eyed wondering who the normally fairly serious guy in the back of the boat really was? Was all this possible from in and around a fairly small and obscure parish in south Cork. Rhino, who comes from a more sophisticated [nearer to 'town'] but nearby part of the country, and who may have met 'fightin Kiely' in his own travels, assured him that every word was Gospel!

It is a mark of the tolerance of the Chinese that we were not asked to leave their 5 star establishment as we nearly fell off our chairs and/or nearly choked laughing. I see I've strayed a little from the serious business.

Sonar goes back in the water tomorrow morning, tune the rig and put in a fairly serious amout of time on the water - always weather permitting - as it will be the last practice opportunity. Then the boat will probably be hauled again tomorrow evening or Saturday morning, washed and polished, back in the water for the practice race on Sunday and the action proper begins on Monday.
The plans for the Skud are not so clear, She hasn't had as much time on the water as the other boat so she will be sailing again tomorrow, perhaps Saturday, and how long she will be out of the water before the racing begins will be decided as we go.

Organisation Matters etc.

The event is 'owned' by a body called the International Paralympic Council [IPC]. It's Irish subset is the Paralympic Council of Ireland [PCI] Kind of parallell body and structure to IOC for main olympics. This body enters into some kind of contarct with the host country and - for the most part - their nationals run the event and head up all the operational units. We obviously use the facilities of the Olympics just finished so in the case of sailing we are based in the olympic sailing 'village' in Qingdao.

Medium sized Chinese city of 7-8 million people. I'd never heard of it before hearing that the sailing events would be held there. Not knowing, I assumed something like Crosshaven to Cork i.e. a small sailing village down the road from the capital city. When I saw the first pictures and heard the population figures it came as a real surprise - its high rise all the way here! When it was built I don't know - most of what I've seen is modern - but it is hard to imagine all of it being built since the 'capitalist roaders' under Deng Xiaoping came into the ascendant in 1978. My girls told me there were 6 ish universities by 30,000 students in Qingdao but I've seen a note saying 28 colleges and universities so we might be looking at a 3rd level student population in the greater Qingdao area of - wild guess - 500,000?

Just checked - probably right - Qingdao covers an area of 10,654sq km, is comprised of 7 districts, with a total population of approximately 8.2 million but with an urban population of 2.3 million. That makes it something like the size of Munster?? Mystery solved - its a province and a city - either way its big!

The 'village' is a 5 star Intercontinental hotel or it will be as soon as we have packed our bags and left. Modern palatial in style. Because it was designed/built for the main olympics - around 1000 - it has a slighlty empty feel to it at present - max 150. But you could get used to the luxury!

My Girls, Su and Viv - and Driver

Because of the language?? for reasons of organisational efficiency and for whatever other reason/s I don't know but there seems to be about 5 'volunteer' helpers for each accredited person [athletes and coaches etc]. Each team, Irish, French etc, has two liaison persons. These are all young girls, undergraduate or post grad mostly, with varing levels of English. There job is to see that we - team leaders - do our jobs. Our job is largely a communication role between the organisers [Chinese] and the athletes. Since we do not understand a word of Chinese hence the need for interpreters. We have two because they work in morning and afternoon shifts.

They are bright, neat, diligent, mild mannered, friendly - and relentless - never give up, 'Denees you missed the meeting - this is what you must do.' 'Denees do you have the list of names for me?' and out comes the notebook. Everything is noted down - from their own briefings and conversations - in their little notebooks.

Mostly in Chinese characters or in impeccable written English. When I have to write something for them I am ashamed at my illegible scrawl in comparison. But we get on - well. All the Chinese we meet are invariably polite. The bad natured boorishness and vulgarity that is a staple of the daily discourse at home appears to be totally absent.

I know this can't be the complete picture but I would say that it is a less aggressive, more polite society than Irish people can imagine. There are also lots of young men employed in the village but I'm not sure what they do - if they do anything at all? Generally women seem to have a position of complete equality - certainly in terms of the organisation of the event women seem to have at least as prominent a role as men - at least! No hint here of the middle-east or perhaps Japan - this may be one of the few/only positives from the communist inheritance/era. [maybe more later]

As I'm a team leader - middling boss - I rate a car and driver [Passat and good driver]. I know, this stuff could go to your head. So, I used the facility once - to go looking for wheelchair tyres around the city - couldn't find any - felt a bit embarrassed - big fat foreigner traipsing after small Chinese girl. But perhaps I'll take it out again on Saturday - and who knows I might get used to it!

Getting tired - two fingered stuff is so bloody slow! More later - hopefully.

Responses all positive - thank you - except one peremptory demand for my chinese mobile phone number. It will be something along the lines 'you can't call the Brits smug!' etc, etc, et bloody cetera.

Good night!
Denis

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Subject: China Weekly - Qingdao Report No 1

Hi Everybody,

as I hope becomes partially clear if you read below I am presently in Qingdao, China with the Irish disabled sailing team taking part in the paralympics. [Thank you CIT for the leave]. As I have to make brief reports to various individuals [who have nothing to do with CIT let me hasten to add] I thought I would use my CIT 'voice' to compile these [I don't know why] even though some of the people who read this will not get all of the CIT allusions [for instance, I blame the cat for starting it all] - but then you may not get the sailing references - but we will do our best to bring you up to speed in that regard as we go along.

DISCLAIMER
The views
that follow are the sole responsibility of the writer and do not represent the position or policy of any other person or body whatsoever, particularly CIT, PCI, ISA, IPC, ISAF, SCORA, ICRA etc etc.

The Squad

Sonar:
Mac: paraplegic [in a wheelchair- motorbike racing accident] International lorry driver before accident and still involved in the transport business.

Rhino: high leg amputee - motorbike accident - going to work at 8.00am. Stonemason and capitalist!

Richard: paraplegic - industrial accident.
One of them said to me last night 'it was like I won the lotto' - because he survived! These 3 guys sail a 23' keelboat called a Sonar [more later]

Maria: coach, former Olympic sailor for Ireland, Atlanta, Sydney and Athens, able-bodied.

Skud:
Amy: paraplegic - most heroic. Beautiful young girl suffering from a degenerative disease. Finished her degree in Spain last year and going on to UL to do Sports Science when she comes home. From Dublin - but we don't hold that against her [rest of the gang are from Cork]

John: paraplegic - cycle race accident many years ago, think he was only 14 yrs old - long-time paralympian. Accountant, probably also qualifies as a capitalist.

Amy and John sail a specially designed boat for the disabled called a Skud - very high tech and very fast!

Matt: coach, former European champion in the Mirror dinghy, able bodied.
Ronan: Amy's brother, cruiser sailor from Dublin Bay and works tirelessly to maintain, rig, fix the boat for Amy [along with father, mother and sister - all out to Qingdao to help in Amy's campaign - fantastic family effort here]

The Trip:
The usual nightmare, 27 hours door to door. Travelled with the full Irish paralympian squad from Dublin via Amsterdam, Beijing [6.5 hr stopover - eyes popping from lack of sleep!] arriving in Quingdao at 16.25 local time and finally hotel [Crowne Plaza - 5 star] at 18.00 approx [minus 7 hrs for Cork time = 11.00] As the Aer Lingus plane was landing in Schipol the Captain wished the Irish paralympian team travelling on board best wishes - as the rest of the passengers filed off the plane the occassional 'good luck guys' mostly if not all American accents.

Later in the airport approached by small wiry [yeah I know - I didn't think they existed either] American guy who said 'I will say one word - Eamonn' We piped back 'Coughlin' - bingo! The guy went on to say that Eamonn Coughlin was the finest, decentest person he had ever met - really could not praise the man enough - So Eamonn Coughlin if by some tiny remote chance you hear of this email, take a bow, Joe Douglas says you're the gentleman of gentlemen! We inquired the guys name and he told us it was Joe Douglas of Santa Monica track and field club in California

He wished us well and went on his way. Googled him later and it turns out he was the real deal, associated as a coach with some of the biggest, most famous names - Carl Lewis, Tommie Smith etc etc - in American athletics. Next guy dressed all in black comes up and inquires if we were the/an Irish team - which wasn't such a big deduction since we had 'Ireland' across the back of our shirts! 3 grandparents from Connemara, which made him 100% Irish in my opinion, brief chat, knew what the paralympics were all about and again wished us the very best in China.

He may have been a journalist, at a guess both of them were on their way back from the olympics as we were on our way out. The point? In little more than the space of an hour we had been given these very positive messages by Americans - almost certainly because we were Irish - God bless them!!

Day 2:
Recovery mode - big time! All we really did was go to the local shopping centre to get our Chinese mobile phones. China Mobile is a state monopoly but that doesn't stop it being market driven and customer friendly. We were served by a friendly, smart, young girl with passable English. Probably took about two hrs to get 3 of us up and running but that included a photo session where we had to pose with half the staff in the shop - I was puzzled as well!

Cost of a SIM card and lots of credit - hasn't run out yet - 200 yuan - 20 euro. Generally some things are a good bit cheaper - food and alcohol, and other stuff seems to be as expensive as in Ireland - computers? shoes, clothes? [maybe more later]. Jet lag? Got worse rather than better for the next few days and it really wasn't until the fifth or sixth day that I began to have close to normal sleep patterns - first 5 day, bed 10/11 falling over with exhaustion, but no sleep until after 5 am and up again between 9 and 10! totally cross eyed.

Day 3:
Went to the local yacht club to see how our boat [Sonar] had survived since May. 3 teams there before us; Israelis, looking competent, as they stood the mast on their boat, English looking smug - as only the English can be - but perhaps they had something to be smug about - having won all those medals. And the Germans? Being German - 3 of them measuring the spreader angle on their mast, one of them holding a straight edge across the spreaders, the other taking a measurement and the 3rd? Supervising the other 2!

Interesting, because I think the gold will come from one of those 3 teams. They are all good sailors and would hold their own in any able-bodied fleet. We are in the 2nd rank of boats - of which there are probably 5 teams, the Norries [Norway], US, France, Ireland, Greece and Australia, 6? OK. It is very difficult to predict the ranking within this group or even to say that boats below such as Canada will not displace some of the ones above - or that some of the 2nd rank boats will not feature in the medals. The standard in disabled sailing has improved significantly in recent years and the fleet is very evenly matched - maybe less than 5 minutes between first and last boat after an hours racing.

Our boat was pig dirty [supposed to be stored under cover - but didn't seem like it to us] and we spent the rest of the day cleaning and polishing it - stand the mast [tricky operation!] take the mast down again, stand it again - all this while we're baking and steaming away in 25 + degs! But it was worth it - at the end of the day we felt we had made progress and looked forward to launching the boat next day.

The Chinese: friendly, helpful, but organised, very organised - maybe a bit too organised for my liking? The language? Impenetrable, I can't even 'read' the pictures in the newspapers [only Chinese, haven't found any newsagents yet. China Daily in english but it is a government paper] All the Chinese we meet/deal with are young 20 - 35ish. Haven't met any middle aged Chinese - more later.

Day 4/5:
Amy's Skud arrives with 4 other Skuds, in a container from Singapore - and when the container is opened we find that the boats had been dreadfully badly packed and our boat is badly damaged.

Fairly major crisis because without extensive specialist repairs the boat will not be able to sail in the event. With the help of Chinese liason girls [more later] we start looking for someone who can repair the boat for us. Local Chinese boatwright comes in and looks at the boat and estimates that he will fix the boat for around 1500 yuan - 150 euro!! Total scepticism, you wouldn't get the job done at home for 10 times that amount. Guy won't do, obviously doesn't know what is required, this is a high tech boat, must find somebody who knows what he is doing - somebody more expensive!! we are not satisfied until we're being screwed!!

Somebody knows somebody who is a 'high tech [expat] expert' so the decision is made to wait until this guy shows up - tomorrow. So we lose a day waiting - and the expert doesn't show! In the meantime the Chinese worker had repaired the Portugese boat, which had also been damaged - and the Portugese appeared to be happy with the work! What are we missing here? back to the Chinese guy, ask him to do the work. He starts off and has most of the work done in a day, finishes it off the following [Sunday] morning - and the job is perfect! He is then asked to do further work on fairing the keel so he takes it off to his workshop and has it back in approx 24 hours - looking like new - all the work done for less tha 400 euro - gobsmacked - thinking of bringing him back to Ireland with us.

Which actually brings us to day 7/8 - time flies.

Which reminds me it is 10 to 2 am here[01.50][jetlag still?] , so while i intended to cover more ground, it is bedtime - slan agus beannacht.

Next installment:

The paralympic village - security, no alcohol - not a drinker, but I miss the drunks! How the village is managed - Chinese organisation - the torch ceremony. My liason girls - 'Denees you missed the meeting for 09.00' - 'sorry Su - firm intenion not to offend again' - God bless Connie Lucey!

A little more about the competition/event - teams, how the regatta will be organised etc. Brief foray into politics - 'Denees why did the English do that to Ireland??' - Rhino's version - and the short version!

My own role, Team preparation - sailing in Qingdao wind weather etc. Where the beach volley ball girls go when they're not at the olympics etc etc. More on the Chinese, etc etc

regards
Denis.

by Denis Kieley

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