By Elias Esquivel for the University of Oregon SOJC Track Bureau
After spending almost four months on the track and field beat and logging countless hours inside Hayward Field, I thought there’d be little that could surprise me once the World Athletics Championships began. After all, I’ve written plenty of stories and been in my bag so far — this was just another opportunity to do that. This was going to be simple, I thought.
I was wrong. Really wrong.
I came to this realization within a few hours into Day One. I’m working on a piece for World Athletics covering the refugee team, so I’m conducting interviews with them after their events. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wouldn’t know much English.
So, there I was, attempting to interview a world-class athlete, asking questions in a language they barely understood. It went as well as you can imagine, but the refugee team athlete, Darian Keletela, did his best to answer my questions and was super patient.
It was a misstep, but the day was young. So I decided to put it behind me and keep it pushing. I walked over to Autzen Stadium to cover the men’s 20K racewalk, sweating through my polo and annoyed that I missed the media shuttle. Eventually, I made it over and linked with my dawg, Maddie, who was covering the women’s 20K.
At this point, the confidence is back. Maddie and I are nice with it, in my opinion, so I’m thinking this coverage will be a breeze. We’re pros, right? I mean, that’s what our professor has been saying for months now, and eventually that starts to sink in. As far as I’m concerned, we can do this work as well as anybody.
This was my second misstep. Sure, we know what we’re doing, but for the second time in only a few hours, I failed to register that most of these athletes weren’t fluent in English. I know this might seem a bit ignorant on my end, and it definitely was. It’s just that after months of covering mostly collegiate athletes and American pros, it hadn’t quite hit me that this was an international event with an international mixed-zone.
It was a culture shock in a sense. Peru’s Kimberly Garcia-Leon won the women’s race and since she only speaks Spanish, Maddie, who is limited in her high school level Spanish, asked me to help her out in her interview.
I’m Latino, so I know Spanish well enough, but these athletes, they speak Spanish Spanish. There’s levels to this language, and I simply can’t compete with those from the motherland(s). It’s intimidating, but I had to be a good teammate. The interview went fine, but I wasn’t much help interviewing the other medalists, since I can’t speak Polish or Japanese.
The men’s race was filled with Latino American talent, so I was hopeful that I could use my bilingual skills again. But instead, again, I was thrown for a loop. The medalists were Japanese and Swedish, so I packed up, left the crowded mixed zone, and decided that I would rely on flash quotes.
Maddie and I laughed about our troubles on our way back to Hayward Field. Our main concern at the beginning of the day were the racewalks themselves; neither of us had covered such an event. The term “cherry-picking” journalism may have been thrown around jokingly as we prepared, but I’m not sure either of us realized how much of an adjustment an international competition demanded. I sure didn’t.
But I do now, and I look forward to making those adjustments for the rest of the championships.
