US high-jumper Chaunte Lowe paid her own way to Rio de Janeiro and picked up the tab for a hotel for a test event in track and field at the weekend — the last of more than 40 test events with South America’s first Olympics starting in less than three months.
Lowe in July is to attempt to qualify for her fourth Olympics, finishing sixth in the past two. She also made it to Athens, but failed to reach the finals.
This trip was to check out what could lie ahead.
“I feel like it’s an investment if you want to succeed and do well here,” she said on Saturday, standing on the two-tone blue track at the Olympic Stadium in the northern neighborhood of Engenho de Dentro. “It’s an investment in yourself and it was worth it for me.”
She was among hundreds of athletes competing in the refurbished stadium in the Ibero-American Championships. A small event, maybe, but it is a big test for an Olympics already under siege.
There is the threat of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, slow ticket sales, deep cuts in the operational budget and state security budget — and almost no sense around town that the world’s biggest sporting event is coming to Rio. No billboards, no kiosks selling Olympic paraphernalia, no buzz.
Brazil is also mired in its worst recession since the 1930s and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been suspended while the federal senate prepares to hear her impeachment trial.
Lowe was not distracted, focused on her first Olympic medal.
“That would be completion,” she said.
She won Saturday’s high jump with a leap of 1.96m, well off her US record of 2.05m.
“Every time I go I have a really hard time adjusting to the new surface,” said Lowe, who has won gold, silver and bronze at the World Championships. “So I wanted to come early and feel it. There are adjustments that needed to be made, and I made those adjustments. Now I feel very confident going into the Games.”
Asked what she learned about the new, springy surface, Lowe replied: “I’m not going to tell anybody. They should have come here themselves.”
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