BEIJING • If you are blessed with a chance to attend the Olympics, don’t yearn for the incredible, don’t let the prospect of something special consume you.

Sit back, show patience and let it happen.

The incredible happiness and incredible heartbreak I witnessed in covering the Beijing Games – my first Olympics – wasn’t planned. It just hit me, like a blast of humidity in the Chinese capital.

Did I sense magic in the air when Henry Cejudo, a Coronado High School graduate, stepped on the wrestling mat for his gold-medal match? Or when Colorado Springs shooter Matt Emmons took aim on his final attempt with an enormous lead?

Of course not.

Incredible happened when a convincing win transformed Cejudo from one of the scrappiest, toughest guys you’ll meet into a sloppy but beautiful mess of sweat and tears, wrapped in an American flag.

Incredible happened when Emmons’ premature squeeze of the trigger, probably from nerves, resulted in a shot that soared above the bull’s-eye and barely hit the target, costing him gold for the second straight Olympics.

Cejudo called his victory “the best thing that has happened to me.” Emmons called his fourth-place finish “just a crazy thing that happened.”

Two people with two different results on the world’s biggest stage – both incredible. And I didn’t expect it.-Contact the Writer: 636-0256 or brian.gomez@gazettedev.gazette.com. Check out our Olympics blog at gazetteolympics.freedomblogging.com

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