Yerkir Pan-Armenian Games Coverage
Even if media coverage of every sporting event has been lacking to say the least, there has at least been some news items. Yerkir Media TV even has one report available online conveniently subtitled into English for IBCToday.com. As the reporter says, attendance at events has been low, but the teams from the Diaspora as well as their friends and families who have accompanied them here are nonetheless taking the event seriously.
These are the final rehearsals of the Fresno and Beirut basketball teams. Every one of them will fight for the champion’s title.
Beirut resident Narek Avetikian is waiting impatiently for his turn to play; he is nervous as his team has fallen behind the rival team during the first minutes of the game.
“We have practiced well. We have trained in Beirut and then we continued to do so when we arrived in Yerevan on Friday. I hope that we are prepared enough to win.”
Although the stadium is not crowded, an absence of spectator enthusiasm was not felt at all.
These Diasporan Armenian youth have come to encourage their friends, however most of all they are hasty to see their Homeland appropriately, to be in places that they have come to know only from their parents’ stories.
“When the games finish, we will all go sightseeing.”
“The best thing is for everything to go well and for this cheerful atmosphere to continue. Everything is great.”
[…]
“Today, in essence, the Pan-Armenian Games have one goal: to gather all Armenians in one place. And the games are organized for that very reason. There are many teams here that come as tourists; they go sightseeing, explore their Homeland and also to take part in the games.”
During each game, victory, evidently, is important. However every single one of these youth will be returning home with a unique victory. A victory that can not be compared with anything else: to stand on the soil of their Homeland, feel the warmth of their country and its people.
Personally, although I think that the event has been poorly organized and advertised, the general idea is a good one and I hope that the next one will be conducted on a larger scale with more effort made for locals to attend. From my experience so far, one of the main problems has been access to information. And whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been emailing me with schedule updates, there’s plenty of information they aren’t passing on to accredited journalists.
Likewise, most people in Yerevan don’t know where the venues for many of the events are and even where the streets they’re located on are. I’ve had that experience today while trying to find Shirvanzade Street. Nobody in Arabkir, including the area around Sports School #1, knew where the street was and told me to go somewhere miles away instead. And when I finally did find the venue for the woman’s basketball, turned out that one of the teams hadn’t turned up and the match had been canceled.
I have to wonder whether the team from Tbilisi couldn’t find Shirvanzade Street either. Anyway, the Yerkir Media TV report in Armenian with English subtitles is here.
Heh, probably the Tbilisi team was already fed up
They were to play with Yerevan, right? …
Comment by Zara — August 21, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
I’m a diasporan and I’m waiting for the wrestling matches.
Comment by Armen Filadelfiatsi — August 22, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
Onnik-jan, append all you want. And thank you for the info.
I just want to say that I am shocked, appalled, pulverized and a million other adjectivized about there being NO wrestling matches in the Pan-Armenian Olympic games. It is the games for Chrissakes! The Olympics is about two things: Running away really quickly, and, not running away, but–confronting–decisively. Fight or flight. Basketball and volleyball are nice games, but, in the end they’re a bit sissy for my taste because they do not involve these two instincts. Both were created in the 20th century for boujies with too much time on their hands.
The boys wouldn’t be illegally fighting each other so much if they actually had the chance to fight one another in the Olympics–that’s the point of the Olympics. That’s the reason why there is an Olympics: the Greek cities were fighting each other left and right; every city was “better than” the other one; the Olympics were a way to deal with this aggression in a healthy way; in other words, the Olympics were a way to bring together the young men of every city, set them on each other, and sit back and watch knowing that nothing destructive was going to come out of the competitive spirit other than laurel leaves and entertainment. That’s what the Olympics is about. As an Armenian, I DEMAND that the fight be put back into the Pan Armenian Olympics.
Comment by Armen Filadelfiatsi — August 23, 2007 @ 1:04 pm