THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY28, 2022 19
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O LY M P I C SJUNIOR
FA S T
O
ne recent Saturday morning, when
snow-blasted city streets took on
the feel of Alpine downhills, two Irish
families set off from the Park Central
Hotel toward the subway at Columbus
looking at pictures of nature can lower
stress levels. “It triggers your internal
imagery. You can associate a forest you
see in a postcard with a forest back
home,” he said. “And for that moment
you’re not thinking about negative stuff.”
The Forest theme reminded him of his
home, in Puglia: “We have a lot of green
spaces.” He turned to the tree photos.
“You can see through the leaves, and al-
most see through yourself a bit.”
A train arrived and he made a bee-
line for the mindfulness carriage. Its
theme was Ocean. A handful of passen-
gers were staring at their phones, im-
ages of beaches with turquoise water
surrounding them. On the ceiling was
a photo of blue sky. The usual ads re-
mained: probiotics, winter wellness. A
quote by Roy T. Bennett appeared be-
neath a credit-card ad: “More smiling,
less worrying. More compassion, less
judgment. More blessed, less stressed.
More love, less hate.”
Back at Canary Wharf, the Inner
Journey Zone was filling up. A class-
room assistant was sitting on a Forest
bench, having just missed her train home.
“I just sat because I was tired,” she said.
“It’s pretty, but I’m not sure what the
message is.” On another bench, a woman
in a hairnet and gloves was on her way
to a hospital shift. Did she find the For-
est imagery relaxing? She was sched-
uled to be in the emergency room that
day, she said, “so I’m not in the mood.”
Nearby, an older man with a backpack
had stopped to read an Inner Journey
sign. “It’s quite nice. It makes you feel
a bit calm maybe,” he said, over the
shouting of teen-agers. His train arrived.
“It’d be better if it was really like that,
with plants and everything, and trees in
here,” he said. “The real thing!”
—Anna Russell
Circle. Their destination: the Armory
track, in Washington Heights, home
of the century-old Millrose Games
track-and-field meet. Their goal: to find
out if either Cian Donnelly, of Head-
ford, or Grace Foley, of Sligo, both eight
years old, just might be the Got Milk?
Fastest Kid in the World.
“The kids aren’t nervous at all, while
I’m about to vomit all over the place,”
Cian’s father, Keith, said. Leading the
trek was Dermot McDermott, the
Sligo-based coach who has brought
Irish grade-schoolers to Millrose meets
since 2014. He wore Nikes (colorful)
and track pants (gray) and seemed un-
daunted by the raging nor’easter as he
descended the subway stairs. Grace,
who won the under-nine Irish cham-
pionship in the three-hundred-metre
race last summer, approached a turn-
stile at eye level. “Can we go under it?”
she asked.
She settled into a seat on an up-
town 1, alongside Cian and her twin
brother, Oliver, who turned around and
knelt on his seat to watch stations whir
by outside the window. When the train
stopped, the kids slid hard to the right.
“Why do they make it so slippy?” Grace
asked. Cian, in a knit cap with a Play-
Station logo and a pompom, had been
up since six and allowed to play in the
snow, but he was instructed not to run
in it, lest he injure himself before the
race they’d crossed an ocean for.
At the Armory, the group entered
a foyer packed with older runners
warming up, steeling their nerves. Cian’s
mother, Joanne, unsure where to check
in, spied a sign reading “ELITE ATH-
LETES.” “Are they élite athletes?” she
said of the kids. When race time ap-
proached, the eight girls and seven boys
competing assembled beside a camera
stand. Corralling them, wearing a white
jacket, was Rita Finkel, the Armory’s
co-president. Staffers distributed cow-
spotted face masks (part of the races’
new dairy-industry sponsorship) and
small flags (for Ireland, and the na-
tions that the local racers had chosen
to represent). The youngsters hopped
in place and fussed with their cow
masks. Grace and Cian posed for their
dads’ iPhones.
On the track’s infield, as a handful
of Olympians and pros idled between
heats, the entrants in the girls’ race were
introduced, waving, on an eighteen-
foot video screen. The fifty-five-metre
sprint lasted all of eleven seconds.
Grace, who finished in just over nine,
tied for third. Then the boys were
introduced, waved their f lags, and
took off. Cian, in just over nine sec-
onds, finished third, too. Afterward,
the groups posed for a picture beside
a five-foot-tall plastic glass of milk,
provided by the American Dairy As-
sociation North East.
The girls were led into a pressroom,
and a staffer in a candy-red pants suit
asked, “Where’s my winner?” She then
positioned Bed-Stuy’s Leilani Ariyibi,
running for Nigeria, at the group’s cen-
ter. The girls were asked how the race
went. Michelle Enlow, a Manhattanite,
said, “I was about to feel like I was gonna
die, but then I didn’t.” Leilani, the
sheepish victor, was asked how she
would celebrate. She shrugged. “Eat,”
she said. Anything in particular? She
shook her head.
Next came the boys. Were they tired?
“Yes.” “No.” “A little.” Cian, in the back,
cow mask on his chin, sneezed into his
elbow. The Bronx’s Bryce Hickman,
the winner, said his favorite part was
“when all of us took a picture in front
of the milk statue.” The reminder ex-
cited Jahziyah Taffe, of Queens, who
had represented Jamaica. “We went
near that milk statue, so I’m pretty sure
we are getting a milkshake!” It was a
mistaken assumption.
In the hallway, parents debriefed
their kids. (“Was it fun?” Grace’s dad,
Desi, asked. “Kinda,” she said.) Lei-
lani posed on a podium, holding a
bouquet of off-white roses. Her fa-
ther, a moving-company owner whose
beard peeked from behind a blue sur-
gical mask, snapped photos. He said
she had earned a rare treat. “I’m gonna
let her get a little soda today,” he said,
and laughed.
Up in the grandstand, Cian and his
family found some seats for the rest of
the races. He played a game on an
iPhone, until his dad held up a Face-
Time screen full of cheering relatives.
“You’d swear he’s in the Olympics, with
all the excitement back home,” Joanne
said. For Cian, more excitement loomed:
he’d been promised a trip to the Lego
Store, and pizza.
—Dan Greene
