How I fell in love with the Olympics

CONCORD, CA (July 23, 2024) — I can remember when I first was aware of the Olympics and how I’ve been enamored with the games ever since!

This month I am headed to France with our youngest child Jared and his new bride Monica and my brother Bill to spend nearly two weeks at the Paris Olympics. This is my third Summer Olympics after also going to the 1984 Los Angeles and 2008 Beijing Games.

This pilgrimage to Paris, in our family’s ancestral home of France, took shape a couple years ago when Monica and Jared had only been dating for a while and several other family members expressed interest in going.

In May 2023 the Olympics held a lottery for potential ticket buyers to get in the queue for tickets. We won three or four spots and Bill and Jared went to work getting tickets. We have ended up with three days of medal competition in Bill and Jared’s favorite sport, track and field. Plus, women’s water polo Monica’s lifelong sport to this day featuring the all-conquering American women.

In addition, we have tickets to women’s basketball, beach volleyball, swimming and women’s soccer. We’ll most likely catch the men’s marathon on our last day in Paris.

I’m still trying to finagle media passes to single sculls rowing with Clayton’s Kara Kohler in the first week of the Olympics and the wrestling events Aug. 5-6 with our local gold medal favorite Amit Elor.

As you might guess, the Olympic Committee isn’t giving tickets away. One ticket to each of those eight sessions is setting us each back over $2200 with prices ranging from $32 for soccer in Lyon to $525 for the final big medal day of track and field. Thankfully we have free lodging in Paris by my sister-in-law Claire’s best friends who are fleeing the Olympic madness.

Dream trip to Beijing

Fourteen years ago, I spent five magical days with my bother Tom in Beijing at the 2008 Olympics. He took me as his plus one when one of his company’s partners who were affiliated with major Olympic sponsor Lenovo invited him and guest.

Not only were all the accommodations, meals and tickets complimentary but they also arranged tours and trips to the Great Wall, Forbidden City and Summer Palace. On the competition side we saw beach volleyball, field hockey (for the first and only time in my life), track and field, diving (we bought those tickets from a scalper), gymnastics and swimming.

We got to see Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, our own Natalie Coughlin, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings and myriad other athletes from around the world.

My first Olympic experience was in 1984 when Los Angeles hosted the Olympics that 14 Soviet allies boycotted.
The first event I attended then was actually in the Bay Area. I bought a $16.50 ticket to Stanford Stadium to watch the US shut out Costa Rica 3-0 in men’s soccer. I could have left out the word “men’s” since women’s soccer wasn’t added to the program until 1996 in Atlanta.

Brothers Tom and Bill, fresh after getting his MBA from UCLA, joined me later for a couple of days viewing track and field in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, also the site of the 1932 games and will be again in 2028. We saw Carl Lewis, Flo-Jo, Daley Thompson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Mary Decker’s fall.

It was also the best Los Angeles ever had to offer due to the incredible leadership and organizational skills of Peter Ueberroth, which won him the Time Magazine Man of the Year Award.

Olympic Trials experiences

Besides attending those Games I’ve also been professionally involved in four United States Olympic Trials and the 2002 Torch Relay which came through Concord en route to Salt Lake City.

The City of Concord and our non-profit California International Sports Foundation won bids and hosted the 1988 and 1996 Olympic Boxing Team Trials although we had to move the ’96 Trials to Oakland because the expansion of the Concord Pavilion wasn’t completed in time that summer. We also hosted the 1992 and 1996 USA Greco Roman Wrestling Trials due to the efforts of legendary local coach Bill Martell.

In 2016 my brother Bill spent two weeks at the US Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Oregon and I caught the second half of that meet with him.

Where it all began

Back in 1960 I watched one of the final days of the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics on black and white TV at the Concord Blvd. home of a classmate from Queen of All Saints School, Mike Ellis.

Then when the Summer Olympics rolled around I was on a school bus coming back from an outing in Golden Gate Park when I heard one of my favorites, John Thomas, only got the bronze medal in the high jump, losing to a pair of Soviet athletes during the height of the Cold War.

Ever since then I would get ready for the Games by scouring through Olympic preview issues of Sports Illustrated and, in recent times, online, which has been a blessing and curse to my enjoyment. With 24-hour news and the internet it is virtually impossible to settle in at night for a four-hour network encapsulation of that day’s events, since you already know the outcomes of the games, races and matches.

The Bedecarré family can hardly wait for 2028 when three generations of our family can gather in Los Angeles for another Olympic feast.