FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

The Opening Ceremonies of the Alt-Olympics Was a Shitshow

Riot police had to keep locked-out ticket holders for the 2013 World Games from storming the entrance
If safeguarding means threatening to shoot you with tear gas. All photos Jason Koebler.

The Opening Ceremony of the 2013 World Games featured 36 acrobats, 52 musicians, 300 salsa dancers (this is the world capital of salsa, after all), and athletes from 90 countries. The headline of a special section of ADN, a daily newspaper in Colombia, read "To enjoying the games!" But hundreds of ticket holders didn't get to as they stood locked outside the entry gates to Cali's Pascual Guerrero Olympic Stadium, riot police ready to launch tear gas canisters at them.

A kind of knockoff Olympics, the World Games was started in 1981 in Santa Clara, Calif. to showcase the world's best athletes in less traditional sports, such as paragliding, ultimate frisbee, tug of war, and "life saving." It's also been the landing ground for ousted Olympic sports like softball. It's been held every four years since then in places like London, the Hague, and, most recently, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This year, Colombia received the honor of hosting the world's best canoe marathoners, roller inline hockey players, and korfballers.

Advertisement

Regardless of the relative silliness of some of the sports, the World Games is still a huge deal for a place like Cali, Colombia—it's a major international event, featuring more than 4,000 athletes. For a city (population 2.5 million) that just recently got its specific mention removed from the State Department's Colombia travel advisory, they had a lot riding on the hope that things went smoothly.

They didn't.

By the time the opening ceremonies started at 7 PM, the stadium, which holds 45,000 people, was already at capacity. Hundreds of ticket holders remained in line outside. Last weekend, the plaza outside "the Pascual" held dozens of families flying kites above the flags of the countries participating in the games. Last night, the plaza held what seemed like hundreds of police, an anti-riot tank, and a sign that said "The National Police welcomes you to the world games" and "we are to your safeguarding."

According to police on the scene, volunteers who didn't technically have a ticket were allowed to stay, and there were also likely a good deal of counterfeit ticket holders who managed to get through.

One fan said the showing proved Colombia wasn't ready to host an event of this scale.

I never managed to find out if the ticket I bought off a scalper was real or not (judging by the fact that he lied about which entrance I needed to use, I'm betting it wasn't).

Colombia has a well-organized police force, but most of them felt the crowd's pain. Moments after explaining that there was no way any more people were going to be let in, a police officer creaked opened the gates of a security checkpoint, allowing us to run towards the entrance.

Advertisement

A bit of controlled chaos ensued, with everyone hurrying towards the turnstiles, knocking over fences--but not people--along the way. A few people may have gotten through the actual entrance before police there slammed them shut (check out the guy who jumps into the second deck halfway through this video), but the vast majority were left ever closer to the entrance: Close enough to hear the announcer shout the names of countries marching, but not close enough to actually see anything besides the huge iron gates keeping them out.

Everything remained peaceful for several minutes, with teenagers pleading with police to let them in, senior citizens shouting "we have tickets," and others hopefully lining up, expecting the gates to open. They didn't, so people started chanting debemos entrar--"we need to enter." Then people started rattling and shaking the gates.

They remained shut, until one intrepid guy managed to jimmy one of them open. People started stampeding in as police tried to shove them back out. Only when they threatened to shoot the crowd with tear gas were they able to get the gate closed again.

That's when the riot police showed up. Lines and lines of tall, hulking officers with shields, tear gas grenades, and head-to-toe black body armor (with each officer's blood type scrawled on the side of his or her helmet) marched in, forming a line behind the crowd and dispersing throughout it. One of them asked me to stop taking pictures, and he wasn't exactly the kind of guy you argue with.

By this point, only about 60 would-be fans remained—I counted 40 riot police in the area, with lines and lines of others at the ready further back. The chanting and the shaking of the gates stopped. A couple bucks and the chance to cheer on some korfball players wasn't worth getting tear gassed.

As I walked away, I heard someone joke: "Want to buy my ticket?"