Eugene’s Saturday Market was decidedly the wrong place to find World Athletics Championships fans early Saturday afternoon, and the right place for those looking to avoid them.
“I think it’s cool,” said Tiffany Brookes, who was examining a rack of colorful $5 wrap-skirts at a clothing stand across from a double-digit drum circle in the downtown heart of the city.
“But I didn’t know anything about it until yesterday.”
A relatively new Eugene resident, Brookes, 28, drove into downtown primarily for the farmers market, where she likes to visit the “fish guy,” who sells good smoked black cod, and buy vegetable starts to plant in her garden.
While there, she didn’t mind meandering among the dozens of tents offering a virtually unquantifiable variety of products as buskers at different corners competed with each other for dollar bills.
The massage therapist, former farmer and student of botany only recently learned from a friend that the championships were a big deal, prompting her to consider researching the cost of tickets. But that’s about as far as her motivation went, and Brookes went home Saturday with gluten-free buckwheat pumpernickle bagels and kale starts.
Several vendors at the market said the crowds were about the same, if not smaller, than most Saturdays.
Ram Shucart showed off the rolling ring on his pinky to the group of women who had stopped to look at the displayed rings the certified gemologist had for sale.
“They’re mildly addicting, but there’s no side-effects,” he said, eliciting a round of laughter. “Maybe a little less anxiety — that’s a side-effect.”
No dice, and they moved on, only to be replaced by others asking to try on a ring on or two.
Shucart, who said he has sold his rings at the Eugene market for 25 years, said he’s heard from many people who say they are from abroad, but he hasn’t asked them if they were in town specifically for the championships.
A short drive away, around 2 p.m., the mystery of where the thousands of visitors were was easily solved. With every step away from the quiet neighborhood to the east of Hayward Field and towards the stadium, the echo of the announcer grew increasingly loud, as the transparent-silver dome peeked out like a poorly-hidden spaceship from among the University of Oregon campus buildings.
The morning set of track and field events was over. Outside the stadium, the athletes and their support staff stuck around to eat or chat. A cluster of Finns in blue gathered under the branches of a sequoia. Australians, in green, sat outside a staff- and athlete-only building and chowed down.
The exits were wide open for a stream of thousands of spectators to leave, many of them headed for a shuttle bus to take them back to their cars. This river of people was where the visitors were to be found.
“I really believe it’s the best of humanity,” Sacha Nastili said as his wife, the true die-hard track-and-field fan among them, watched him, smiling. “I think it’s beautiful.”
The pair drove from Oakland, Calif., to Washington state and dropped off their kids with family, then flew to Eugene for the events. Both have Caribbean families, which Idrissa Nastili said was the source of their love for the sport.
Idrissa Nastili said she ran when she was young, finding it to be a “very freeing sport.” She loves the range of track and field, she said, still discovering new things after years of fandom. Saturday, for example, she was surprised to discover how graceful hammer throwing is.
And, yes, the event is meeting her expectations. But the 100-meter women’s race scheduled for Saturday night was among the events she was most looking forward to.
“I’m going to be off-the-wall excited.”
— Fedor Zarkhin
