Sky Sport presenter and SENZ radio host Kirstie Stanway is surviving MIQ by reviving her favourite Olympic memories and talking on the airwaves from her hotel holding pen.
Each day starts the same. I wake to the sound of army boots shuffling up and down the corridor.
It’s the hotel’s military staff swiftly dropping breakfast outside my room. No matter how hard I try I never catch them. I wonder if Lisa Carrington would have any luck? She’s just down the hall.
It’s day six and I’m nearing the halfway mark of my MIQ sentence, but my sanity is wearing thin. I imagine this is what it’s like to be locked behind bars, but I’m quickly brought back to reality.
I’m writing this perched on a sun lounger, half inside and half outside my room; my blistered feet warming in the sun, recovering after walking 20,000 steps a day between Olympic venues. It was like an Olympic event just trying to cover the Covid Games.
My mornings in Tokyo started with a two-minute drool session into a test tube - a slightly less invasive Covid test than what we’re doing here in New Zealand, but nonetheless not a pretty sight. If the drool didn’t come naturally all you had to do was think about the delicious Japanese food.
I’d gather my gear and head down to Level Two and while it sounds like a romantic Tokyo getaway, reality was anything but. You were greeted at the restaurant entrance by a very smart tablet that through facial recognition would check your temperature. The magic number: anything in the 36 degree Celcius range...37 and you’re in trouble.
After slapping on a third layer of hand sanitiser, on went the disposable gloves before making your selection of Japanese omelette, fish, pickled vegetables and, if you’re lucky, karaage chicken, before returning to your cubicle to eat alone and stare at others through panes of plastic... I was half expecting a phone next to the glass to talk to my visitors.
Now to explain the blistered feet. I’d head off to the International Broadcast Centre, a 1.5km walk, careful not to veer off the path as you’re being tracked through GPS by the Japanese authorities. By this time it’s 8.30am and 31 degrees, but the humidity feels like I’m in a sauna.
The only way to cool down is an ice block and it’s time for my first one of the day. It’s hot, it’s sticky, it’s hard to breath behind these sweaty face masks - but we are at the Olympic Stadium for the first day of the athletics. How lucky are we? This is what dreams are made of.
Back to my balcony in Christchurch where there’s a 30-degree temperature difference. My heat pump doesn’t even get to the mark we were hitting on a daily basis in Tokyo. But, I’m one of the lucky ones to have been assigned a room with a balcony and, to be honest, the fresh air is as close to winning Lotto as you can get in here. It’s as rare as striking Powerball.
I know this because this isn’t my first rodeo. I completed my first lag last year after returning from Sydney with the All Blacks, so this time around I considered myself a seasoned pro. But a few days in, I was back inside with no parole in sight.
Then Stephen ‘Beaver’ Donald strolled into my life, coming to my rescue just as he did for the All Blacks, and the nation, in 2011.
Through the SENZ airwaves I heard him: he was wearing an All Blacks shirt three sizes too small (okay, I may be getting a little delirious in my quarantine) and he’s my mate. But that's the thing about Beav - he’s everyone’s mate.
On air, we talk about sport and we talk about life, and from in here, it’s comforting to talk about the outside world. His words give me hope without him even knowing he’s doing it. While there are only so many times I can hear him ramble on about ‘that kick’, he’s genuinely interested when I ramble on about the previous month spent in Tokyo.
It had been a dream of mine since I was a young girl to go to the Olympics. Much to my father’s dismay I wasn’t there as the gold medal winning cyclist he “knew” I would be. Instead, I was there as a journalist, privileged to be sharing special moments with our Kiwi heroes when their families and friends couldn’t be there.
There were many ‘pinch yourself’ moments, like when I burst into tears on the media bus because triathlete Hayden Wilde had just won our first medal. The boy from Whakatane who had been coached by my former coaches, Greg and Liz.
What about Jane Nicholas, who I went to school with, paddling in slalom canoeing for the Cook Islands? Two girls from Tauranga standing two metres apart at the Olympic Games. All we wanted to do was give each other a big hug, but we had to settle for eye contact across the barrier, smiling ear-to-ear behind our masks. But still, we were there, both living our dreams.
Back at the Olympic Stadium I stood and watched Dame Valerie Adams grab the bronze medal off the tray and proudly put it around her own neck.
But the moment that touched me most came from Timaru’s Tom Walsh. With the New Zealand flag draped around his shoulders and another bronze medal around his neck, the humble Kiwi put the last 18 months into perspective. Fighting back tears he simply said: “It feels awesome”.
This moment deserved a standing ovation from a full house, but instead everywhere I turned I saw empty seats. We were the lucky ones, there when no one else could be. We shared these moments with our countrymen and women, and I’ve never felt prouder to be a New Zealander. For 16 days, that feeling never left.
And there I was, standing in the media pit, right behind the finish line, when the Olympic Stadium goes pitch black. It’s the men's 100m final. A race I’ve watched on TV every four years since I was that little girl with big Olympic dreams.
That was the single greatest night of my life. And just like that my Olympic experience was done in a flash just like the 100m final... Now, if only quarantine would fly by as quickly as Italian Marcell Jacobs did that night.
* You can hear Kirstie Stanway talk sport with Stephen Donald on the "SENZ Drive with Kirstie, Beav and Rikki" show, Monday-Wednesday and Friday.
