38: Colorado

Another morning at the campus in the mountains. I push a button for another cup of coffee. A light turns on, a cup drops, a stream of tepid brown liquid trickles down.

I open the manila folder again and look at the blurry photo paper-clipped to the front flap, a short, skinny, dark-haired man in a blue tracksuit, leaning over a table, caught in action.

Age: 38

Birthplace: Shanghai, China

Grip: Shake Hand

I’ve only been working as a tech here for a couple months, so I got stuck in the final group, picked last like in grade school gym class, working on this middle-aged guy who probably wouldn’t even have a shot at the games again.

The idea of one country against another doesn’t seem to apply anymore, since Team U.S.A. is mostly Asian at this point, half-Chinese. The lobby is empty again. I shake his hand, thinking: You’ll show me, will you?


The equipment manager takes him off to get suited up. I tinker with the sensors, run the system test another time.

“Man, I’d totally bone that Natalie chick,” one of them says, a trainer, says.

“Dude,” the physician replies, “she’s like, fourteen.”

“Nah, bro, she’s just Asian.”

The Chinese guy starts to stretch his arms, does a quick Tai Chi like warm-up, followed by a couple of test swings while I calibrate the sensors. I turn the difficulty up, increase the speed, and watch his arms move even faster, a blur. The balls were smaller back then, faster.


We break for lunch. The Chinese guy hits the showers while I shut down the robot and run the data-processing algorithms. “Bro,” says the physician. “Mr. Miyake. This is, like, some total Karate Kid shit.”

The equipment manager brings the Chinese guy back, dressed in his tracksuit again, then they all head out the door together. I’ve got a salad in the fridge, so I don’t mind staying behind to analyze this morning’s data, recalibrating TOPR, preparing the table for this afternoon’s training, starting to draft our group’s report.


The athletes all come in to the OTC in the morning, then go out and party at night. Team U.S.A. may not have taken home any medals in 2008, but they totally owned the competition during the after-parties, playing champagne-pong. There’s always another game, another season.

The Chinese guy has been nice enough, and I can see why they keep him on the team. The data is pretty interesting, actually. The changes in speed and spin, the variance with different coefficients of friction, the effect of hardness and softness of rubber and sponge.

Word has a special AutoSummarize feature. No one is going to read the short version either.