Aug. 13, 2008

Kristina Lennox Career Bio

BEIJING, China--Former Villanova swimmer Kristina Lennox is representing Puerto Rico at the Olympic Games in Beijing. She will be sending home updates from Beijing every couple of days. Kristina will compete in the 100 and 200 meter butterfly and the 400 meter freestyle. Visit www.villanova.com throughout the Olympics for the latest on Kristina's blogs from China. Kristina's entries will be posted with the most recent blogs towards the top of the page.

Friday, August 8

Like I mentioned earlier, there are super residential centers around the Village to provide the athletes with a means of communication to the outside world via Internet, a place of entertainment with the video arcade room, televisions, and a source of information through the many newspapers handed out like: "China Daily: The Olympian" and "Village Life". After leaving the Internet cafe at the super residential center one night, low and behold were none other than Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, shooting hoops in the basketball game room. Even then did they not lose their speed in shooting hoops with a huge crowd surrounding them and flashing lights of cameras. At the time, I did not have my camera to snap a few pictures of the glorified athletes as my camera was back in the room charging from being used too much.

Well, tonight is the big show. 08.08.08 has finally arrived and the Village is up in a frenzy. I made sure to get in both of my practices in due time before the Ceremonies to get ready and look presentable for the millions that will be watching. Puerto Rico made sure to fit the entire team in a uniform of a blue blazer, white button up shirts, red tie for the guys and a red scarf for the ladies, khaki pants and black shoes. Nonetheless, it was a very interesting outfit, presentable but not a very attractive outfit, at least not for us ladies.

As for now, this will be short as I have to get back to my room to prepare for the ceremonies. I will write all about the Opening Ceremonies later.

Wednesday, August 6

After only being in the Olympic Village for a couple days now, it's still pretty amazing to be near athletes of the highest caliber from all over the world, and even more so, to be training with them, too. Everywhere you look around the Village, you see athletes in the best shape of their lives: walking, biking, running, or even rollerblading to the dining halls, residential halls, or the super residential centers. Apparently, the training never stops even when you are on your down time. Besides the appearances of the athletes, hearing the many languages that you can not always identify is so unreal. But, there is one main language to link most of the athletes and the Chinese volunteers in the Village, which is none other than the English language.

Just like any other day at home, team Puerto Rico headed to our first practice of the day. With our coach, Zanoni Lopez, and the swimming representative, Nestor Garcia, we headed for the pool. Along with my teammates, Vanessa Garcia, Dan Velez, and my brother, Doug, we all went our separate ways to start our training. It's not that we dont' consider ourselves as a unified team, but since we are all coming from different backgrounds of training to form the Puerto Rican team, we have to do what is necessary for ourselves respectively in training. For instance, Dan has to focus on his event which is early on and more of a sprint, so his workouts are not as long and intensive as mine are. Doug has a more sprint based training from this summer at Tennessee. Vanessa is fortunate enough to have her coach from Puerto Rico here, Zanoni to guide her through her workouts until her event on the 15th. Compared to my teammates, I have been spending a lot more time in the water doing my yardage and work as my events are based on endurance.

After practice, the whole delegation of Puerto Rico had to be ready for the first ceremony in the Olympic Village, the "Welcoming Ceremony". This is where each country is recognized as an entity by the mayor of the Olympic Village and the flag is raised to officially start and honor each country. At our small ceremony, we were welcomed along with Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Estonia, and the Central African Republic. During the raising of each flag, the national anthem of each country played and commemorative gifts were presented from each country to China and vice versa. It was a very beautiful ceremony held in the gardens of peace where all the flags of each 205 countries are being flown.

Once the ceremonies were over, some of the athletes and the representatives of Puerto Rico head over to the main dining hall. The dinning hall itself is quite large and overwhelming when you walk in the doors. To one end of the dining hall, is the glorified McDonald's. I have not ventured yet to that side of the dining hall, not until I've officially competed and finished my races at the Olympics. Only then, will I indulge in the "fatty" foods from McDonald's. But, China has outdone themselves with the food. We have a variety of food to choose from every day. Just like the dining halls at Villanova do we get our choice of what to eat, only it is more international choice versus the main entrees at Villanova. We have our choice of beverages from the Coca-Cola products, Coke, Diet Coke, Powerade, Orange Juice, Green Tea, Ice Tea and Water.

Heading to our second practice, at the main competition pool, is about 1.5 km away. It's a bus ride away, where we meet the bus at the bus transport center where there are over 50 stops to take athletes and coaches to the many venues all over Beijing. While waiting for the bus, it's only fitting to meet and chat with the other athletes to get to know one another. Topic of conversation can range from just a "hello, how are you" to "what event are you swimming" to exchanging of pins. The exchanging of pins is something that has been done throughout all the Olympics. Each country creates their own pin which is then passed out from the athletes and coaches to other teams. Depending on the size of the country it creates the value of each pin. For instance, since the USA is such a large delegation, the value of their pin decreases, whereas a country like, Puerto Rico (size of delegation is only 22) is more valuable. So, finding the country with the smallest delegation is providing a pin of "great fortune" should you sell it later on.

So until another day...

Tuesday, August 5

Just saying hello to you all because I have some time on my hands now...It's only been a little over three days since I have been here and it feels like forever. Don't get me wrong, it's not forever in a bad way, but with the time difference and how things are run here very smooth and easy-going, time feels like it is standing still.

But everything here is amazing! I can't even begin to describe it. They all have been saying that this is by far the best Olympics because China has obviously outdone themselves.

The "dorm" area where we are staying is like an apartment complex but with a hotel feel to it. We have people come clean our rooms--which I believe never happened in the past; people to open the doors for us, people assisting us in the locker rooms, people helping us in the bus transport system to get to the different venues, etc. Let's just put it this way, the volunteer system here is just unbelievable. All the volunteers know English well enough to get by, which to me is unheard of. Apparently though, ever since China received the bid, a lot of the citizens signed up for English classes for those 6-7 years of preparation.

Again, as they say this is the best Olympics of them all, I'm so lucky to be apart of it. The room where I'm staying in is one room of a 3-bedroom apartment. We have a common area with a HD Flat Screen TV, and the three rooms have their own bathrooms (either the bathroom is in the room themselves or just outside your bedroom door). The rooms in our apartment have two twin beds per room. There are other apartments that have single rooms with a twin bed or rooms with a double bed. It all depends on where you are living and, more importantly, which country you are from. Obviously USA has a beautiful complex, not downgrading where I'm staying but it is very beautiful. I'm rooming with Vanessa Garcia--she's swimming the 50 free for Puerto Rico.

Anyways, the village is starting to fill up now which is cool, Unites States just arrived yesterday. But that was only the swim team that arrived, part of USA has already been here since the 31st I believe. Yesterday, Doug (Kristina's brother...also competing) and I met up with a friend of ours from Deerfield, IL, who is representing USA in diving, Christina Loukas. She's pretty sick, I used to dive with her back when I was still between swimming and diving in high school.

However, I have seen lots of Polska, Korea, Zimbabwe, Bulgaria, Pakistan, China, Nederlands, some Aussies, and even Kazakhstan! What's ironic is I think that Kazakhstan has more athletes here than does Puerto Rico.

I'm lucky Doug is around with me because it seems as if he knows of everyone and everything. I'm so amazed by all the knowledge he has about different athletes and what they looked like. He pointed out some professional basketball player from Houston that I would have never guessed except the fact that he is ridiculously tall. I ran into Matt Grevers (US Olympic Swimmer) today, I used to swim with him a while back at LFSC. He was pretty cordial to Doug and I as we probably haven't spoken in over 4 years. Oh how the Olympics brings us all together.

I just came back from the competition pool, aka the water cube. It's beautiful. The stands are huge, they actually have one full side of the stands for just the media. Although they could have structured the pool better to fit more audiences, they didn't do it that way which is unfortunate. The pool itself is pretty sweet...It's a nice big 10-lane, 50-meter pool by 25 meters. Everything obviously is FINA sanctioned where they have regulations even as to what the temperature of the pool should be. When I've been swimming at the pool it feels pretty fast as the pool is deep enough and the same level throughout the entire pool. Besides the side of the pool with the media that I talked about earlier, they have cameras everywhere I look. Above the starting blocks, in the water, running along the the sides of the pool on tracks, at the ends of the pool, and above the pool. I think that is everywhere I saw camera set-ups but I'm not sure, they could add more by the time the meet actually begins. So we'll see how much will be shown on TV!

The other night they did a huge fireworks display where it sounded like a war was going on with all the BOOM and BAM and sizzling effects of them. It was funny to see everyone stop dead in their tracks between buildings looking at the sky and even people running around like their heads are cut off just to get a glimpse of the show. People were gossiping that maybe they set of the opening games fireworks a week too early!! Haha, wouldn't that be hilarious. But obviously it is just a test run. I was awestruck by the practice run alone and I can't even fathom what they will come up with to top it off during the Opening Ceremonies.

As for the food, it has been nothing short of spectacular. They really have come a long ways from what the rumors were saying. We have an array of foods to choose from. It ranges from Mediterranean food to International food to McDonalds. Yes, McDonalds is like its own food group. Hahaha. The Olympic Village has gone above and beyond what they should and provide us with so many options, it feels like I'm back home in the Villanova Dining Halls trying to decide on what to eat. And, it's not like they are only providing us with healthy foods, we do have our options for desserts, etc. I'm obviously steering clear of that, at least until I'm officially done with my competition. Eat for function, not for pleasure!

I have to run, but I'll send more later.