At the mixed zone, snapshots of a Games of joy and grief

If you seek pain, insanity and gratefulness at the Olympics, it can be found across a metal barrier. When they’re done at every venue, dripping with water, breathless, beaten, grinning, shaking, whatever, this is where athletes come.

Here, everyone has a story.

On July 31, Denilson Cyprianos is slowest of 28 competitors in the 200m backstroke heats and yet he’s gone faster than he’s ever gone before. By 0.05 of a second. It’s a flicker of improvement but it’s why he, 21, is grinning.

“Every fraction counts. Little by little. Those baby steps, that’s how you make the big walk.”

The metal barrier which separates Denilson and me represents the mixed zone. It is the most democratic place of the Games, where rankings is no guarantee of special treatment. It doesn’t matter if you’re Denilson or Noah Lyles, you have to walk this narrow corridor. You can parry questions or walk on, but most stop and spill their dreams to journalists and the vast staff of the Olympic Information Services reporters.

The unknown are heard here, the forgotten recorded and the famous transcribed. Here defeated boxer Eumir Felix Marcial of the Philippines says, “there will also be a lot of praying and asking God what to do next”. Here, Manon Apithy-Brunet of France wins gold in the women’s sabre and says, “I think I will sleep with my medal, because I dreamed about it.”

People on the outside sometimes deride athletes who can’t win, but in the mixed zone are whispered tales of desperation which would make anyone flinch. Mariana Pajon Londono of Colombia, a BMX racing gold medallist in 2016 and 2012, talks about three operations she had in 2023.

“The last one was in December, and it ended up really bad. When I started the season, I wasn’t quite sure if I could make it through qualifying. I ended up destroying my elbow. I had no ligaments. I didn’t have time to reconstruct the elbow. They just fixed it a little bit so I’m just happy to be here.”

These quotes are transmitted to the media every day and every Olympic morning they are this writer’s required reading. At the end of a Games they vanish into the ether, but deserve to be compiled into a book. This is brief insight into intriguing worlds we don’t see.

At the mixed zone we remember that the heroic in sport encompasses many things. Journeys, for instance. Not everyone arrives from a coddled world of air-conditioned gyms. Sometimes arenas are just homemade. Like the badminton dirt courts in El Salvador which Uriel Canjura’s mother and stepfather got up every morning to draw lines on using white ash.

“When I didn’t have trainings,” Cantura says one day, “I would hit the shuttlecock against the wall in my house. My mum said, ‘Don’t break the wall’. But I did, because I hit it there every afternoon.”

No one can be everywhere at this vast Games. Reporters scuttle between venues and television sometimes offers multiple channels. That’s the big picture but at the mixed zone, caught in the flash quotes, are the gentle conceits of champions and the sportsmanship of the unknown.

In boxing’s 57kg category, Nebil Ibrahim of Sweden beats Wasim Abusal and even though there is no video his words sound distraught. “I was very sad that I got a Palestinian as I am a strong supporter (of their cause) and it broke my heart that I had to (fight him).”

But it’s defeat which tells you most about humans. How hard athletes work, how much they give up, how quickly and sometimes cruelly it all unravels.

China lost 32-31 to Poland in the women’s epee team bronze medal match. France lost 30-29 to Italy in the gold medal match. Fencers crumple and then they straighten up and come and talk about broken things. “We were one touch away from gold,” said Auriane Mallo-Breton of France.

But grief is conveyed in its rawest form by a plumber. Australian Harry Garside won a bronze in Tokyo, but this time lost in the first round and wept and left through his words an image of what these Games mean.

“I don’t believe in God or that sort of stuff but you hope some angel or something catches you up there. But unfortunately, it’s just smashed deep in my face.”

The morning of July 31 is kinder as Denilson smiles and tells me proudly that he’s the first black male to represent Zimbabwe in the pool. “So it’s really special for me to just show the kids back home that anything’s possible to get to this level.”

Down the other end of the mixed zone another swimmer, I discover later, is close to tears. No story is the same here. No life similarly changed. No hope equally grasped. Just brilliant snapshots of a Games which fade with time.