Well i woke up on Thursday morning cold and upside down in my bed with my head on the computer - appears I attempted to write my blog during the night after one too many Caipirinhas at Casa de Brazil!!!! It meant for a particularly fuzzy start to the morning when i barely lifted my head off the pillow - luckily for me my park tickets were for a 4pm start so i was not missing anything and in fact my sluggish start resulted in me catching another "Olympic Moment". Gemma Gibbons was competing in the judo where we had not had a medal for 12 years. She beat the French world champion to get through to the final and guarantee herself a silver or gold medal. She threw her opponent for a win, punched the air then broke down into tears on the mat then looked sky words and said "I love you Mum"!!!! - powerful stuff and totally what I love about the Olympics - you would have to have a heart of stone to not be moved by this!!!!
I then got myself together and made the tube and train journey out to Stratford. I have to say so far i have been very impressed with how easy it is to get to the park. 35mins from door to gate and that is using 3 different trains. They are frequent and quick and the security queues have caused no issues at all. Quite an achievement when you see the amount of people milling about. I met up with Mandy and we headed for the big screen down by the velodrome. What a day we had!!!!! We got there to discover Team GB had already started the Gold Rush with a gold in the shooting and then a gold and silver in the canoe slalom - brilliant achievements.
We watched Pendelton and Varnish qualify for the women's sprint in a World Record time - the first World Record I have ever watched live at a venue and we held it for all of 5 mins until those pesky Chinese came and took it away ha ha. The atmosphere was electric and I have never ever heard such a loud gasp when our men's sprint team came out and Phillip Hines wobbled and fell off at the start of heat 1. Luckily for us there was a restart and as you will all now know, they went on to win Gold in a World Record time - I am not ashamed to say there was tears. It was just awesome. I was surrounded by thousands of people all cheering and waving flags and I felt so so proud. We had sat through the disappointment of the women being disqualified for a technical infringement and also witnessed the awesome Chinese women being relegated to silver medal for the same thing. The Team GB men's pursuit Team had come on and smashed the opposition in qualifying posting another World Record. We just could not believe what we were witnessing all day and it was magical.
Finally at the end of the day in the velodrome them men's sprint team came out for their medal ceremony. The noise was immense and then as we saw the final medal being hung around King Hoy's (that's the next step up from a Sir is it not?) neck, the link to the big screen cut off!!!!!!!!! A collective scream of NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO by 10000 people is pretty powerful stuff and as they frantically tried to fix the link we missed the anthem. Gutted gutted gutted - luckily the replayed it for us later.
Having got over the emotion of the day we headed for food and were en route for fish and chips when we saw a commotion outside BBC headquarters. Now still remembering the stupidity of "changing a light bulb gate" - see yesterdays blog - we tentatively walked towards it. We then saw gold medals being hung over the balcony so we ran - yes ran - over and found the Canoe Slalom boys Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott displaying their medals for the crowd - Fab Fab moment!!!!!. They applauded the efforts of all the crowds and you really get the feeling that our Team GB athletes can not quite comprehend the support they are getting from the home crowds. They knew it would be good but the noise has been phenomenal.
As our day at the Olympic Park came to a close we decided to go into the Coca Cola Beat Box - an amazing structure containing the brain child of Mark Ronson who has composed the Olympic Song from the natural noises of people partaking in Olympic events including table tennis, archery, 100m hurdles and 400m. There are sound cushions all the way up which you activate with your hands to hear the different elements of the musical piece and you are instructed all the way by the very enthusiastic Future Flames who were all torch bearers on the Torch Relay through Great Britain. The surprise at the very top was our opportunity to have our picture taken with the Olympic torch with the stadium in the background. A superb way to finish off a great Golden day for Team GB.
I am pleased to say this experience is shaping up to be everything i thought it would be and more. Friday is my big big day where I have my first ticketed event. I will be at the aquatics centre for the Swimming where Rebecca Adlington will be going for gold in the 800m freestyle and I cannot wait :-)
Having got over the emotion of the day we headed for food and were en route for fish and chips when we saw a commotion outside BBC headquarters. Now still remembering the stupidity of "changing a light bulb gate" - see yesterdays blog - we tentatively walked towards it. We then saw gold medals being hung over the balcony so we ran - yes ran - over and found the Canoe Slalom boys Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott displaying their medals for the crowd - Fab Fab moment!!!!!. They applauded the efforts of all the crowds and you really get the feeling that our Team GB athletes can not quite comprehend the support they are getting from the home crowds. They knew it would be good but the noise has been phenomenal.
As our day at the Olympic Park came to a close we decided to go into the Coca Cola Beat Box - an amazing structure containing the brain child of Mark Ronson who has composed the Olympic Song from the natural noises of people partaking in Olympic events including table tennis, archery, 100m hurdles and 400m. There are sound cushions all the way up which you activate with your hands to hear the different elements of the musical piece and you are instructed all the way by the very enthusiastic Future Flames who were all torch bearers on the Torch Relay through Great Britain. The surprise at the very top was our opportunity to have our picture taken with the Olympic torch with the stadium in the background. A superb way to finish off a great Golden day for Team GB.
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