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Friday 10th - Athletics (Olympic Stadium)

At last came my chance to have a wander around the Olympic Park, and a balmy Friday evening had surely created the ideal atmosphere for it. The Park feels more authentically Olympian than visiting other venues elsewhere, and it felt great to immerse myself in a place I'd been reading about and seeing from afar for years.

It's easy for the Park to radiate warmth and vitality when it's teeming with people, of course. The real test will come once the Paralympics are over, and all the talk of Legacy will become real. Having been to both Barcelona's and Munich's parks in recent years, they give off a sense of occasion as memorials but both felt somewhat barren and sparse.

World's largest McDonalds~!

Still, I doubt this was on anybody's mind when they were inside the stadium, which was packed as it was for every session. Minor quibbles such as long queues and incompetent staffing at the food stalls couldn't do much to spoil the show. The venue felt much smaller than similarly-sized football stadia, with no long trudge up multiple flights of stairs to get to our second-tier seats, and a wide panoramic view of the track and infield that's impossible to convey on TV.

It must be said that the BBC's athletics coverage has grown increasingly light on actual live coverage in recent times, with the modern preference for interaction leading to endless studio chatter (analysis in the cases of Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson not really being the right word) at the expense of seeing much of the field events, if any. And thanks to the new penchant for showing the recorded reaction shots of the presenters/commentators/pundits after big races, we've also been treated to the sight of TV slowly eating itself.



Jamaicans win their relay heat - Bolt absent 
(probably out on the pull instead)

Being at the stadium gives you the opposite problem of there being too much to take in. During a track event like the women's 5000m there were also men pole vaulting on one side of the infield and women hurling hammers on the other, making it impossible to follow all the twists and turns of those events. Although in this multitasking age, where simply watching one thing without periodically broadcasting your own opinions of said thing and then checking whether the rest of the world agrees with you is like, totally one-dimensional, it felt rather apt.

Look! - A mini, er... Mini

Anyway, it's great to hear the crowd's clapping echo around the stadium and build to a crescendo as someone lines up for a throw or jump. Same goes for witnessing the medal ceremonies in the flesh. You get to see all the athletes coming out and their introductions, as well as sharing fully in their celebrations. And you notice odd little things like the dinky remote-controlled minis which brought the hammer back to the throwing circle each time. TV could never offer such an immersive experience, even if you got rid of the chatter.


 Saturday 11th - Canoe sprint (Eton Dorney)

In fact this was both canoeing - where you kneel Hawaii 5-0-style brandishing a single-blade paddle - and kayaking, where participants sit with double-bladed paddle in a far more sensible position. Many of us try the latter (though confusingly it's often called canoeing) at least once as kids before a particularly traumatic capsizing incident prevents us from ever setting foot in one again. Or maybe that was just me.

This is one of the lowest-profile Olympic sports, partly due to its scheduling in morning sessions at the tail end of the games. You get the feeling minor sports will always draw the short straw when it comes to deciding who should fill up the quieter hours of each day. Its close relative the canoe slalom is substantially more exciting as riders attempt to negotiate their way up and down whitewater rapids, whereas this is simply paddling short distances in a straight line.

Paddle up! (or something)

Of course, the same could be said about track sprinting, and that doesn't do too badly. I guess it's just the way things evolve - rowing (for which Eton was also the venue) is recognised as a supreme human endurance test and has traditional British associations with nobility and class, and is thus perceived as a more legitimate sport. Paddling very fast for no more than a couple of minutes can't really compete.

Not that this will matter much to Ed McKeever. Even though he'll now go back to his accountancy training, no matter that his gold will probably get rather overlooked amongst the 28 (!) others for Team GB, he will always remember those 36 seconds when thousands of voices roared him on towards Olympic glory, which is more than most of us can ever hope for.

Ed McKeever, shortly before "medalling" 
(verbing sucks)

This was an odd morning, as the journey to Eton Dorney via well-to-do Windsor lasted about as long as the actual session (and felt even longer given how early we had to rise), the session itself containing a lot of padding and victory ceremonies and maybe 10 minutes of racing action in total. As has been the case with all my Olympic experiences though, none of that mattered. Our fellow spectators were friendly and upbeat, the volunteers - far more numerous than strictly necessary, it has to be said- even more so. A special mention to the surprisingly heavy Hungarian contingent at Eton Dorney too - clearly the Magyars love their kayaks.

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Always end on a penis shot

That wasn't quite the end, as I went to the Blur gig at Hyde Park on Sunday which was loosely tied in with the Games, specifically the closing ceremony. The sound was atrocious and the drunken dickhead quotient unacceptably high, but an extended rant would neither (a) be a suitable way to end my Olympic period or this piece itself on a high, nor (b) be a fair reflection of what overall has been a wonderful, heartwarming couple of weeks.

Fretting over how we might be able to perpetuate this new-found national pride is missing the point. Moments such as this are never meant to last. The trick being to make the most of them while you can, and London has lived this one to its fullest. Soon enough it'll be back to reality.

Now, when do those Paralympic things start...