Volleyball at Earls Court

Here's Robin at one of the best 2012 venues I've been to - Earls Court, where I watched a volleyball double header on Monday night. Earls Court has been around for a *long* time (Buffallo Bill performed there back in the day!), so it's well set up for this sort of thing. And you can really feel that the sport has had to play catch-up with beach volleyball in the last few years, making much more effort with crowd participation and inter-match entertainment/music. 

We saw two men's games - the very capable USA beat Tunisia and then Brazil overcame Germany in a close game (which didn't finish until well after 11pm). I sat next to a very pleasant Bulgarian couple, who were very into volleyball. Bulgaria topped the other group and will play Germany next. I'll definitely be rooting for them.   

Robin at the canoeing

Robin has now been to more London 2012 events than I have, as my mum took him to the canoe/kayak sprints at Eton Dorney yesterday. Apparently it was all organised like clockwork - everything at these Games really has been - and a fine time was had by all. As at all the events I've been to, the Brits were supporting the underdog if there wasn't a GBR competitor, which in this case meant cheering madly for whoever was in last place. Sounds fun.

Robin also had his first go on the official Park and Ride. Not particularly cheap - £12 + booking fee - but, again, very well organised. 

The London 2012 Commentary Radio

  

UPDATE:  Having now taken the commentary radio to a bunch of events, thought I'd post a wee update to say that it's actually turned out to be a bit disappointing. At several events, the "commentary" consists only of what you can hear being announced over the PA anyway. So not really commentary at all. Only a couple of events have had actual commentary which other spectators wouldn't be able to hear, during the match. So far, the breakdown looks like this...

PROPER COMMENTARY: Badminton, Table tennis (and even the table tennis commentary abruptly finished midway into the session on Sunday)

NO COMMENTARY: Water polo, archery, volleyball, beach volley

Suddenly, that tenner doesn't seem quite so worthwhile, even with all the events I'm seeing. Really don't understand why they've bothered to have the technology in place (you can hear PA announcements at all venues) but not got a commentator.

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If you're going to more than a couple of London 2012 events, then this clever commentary radio thing is probably worth a go. Head to one of the programme seller booths and, for £10, you get a wee radio which clips onto your ear and gives you access to commentary during the event. 

That was particularly worthwhile at the table tennis where you got constant, informed commentary (albeit from a commentator with an extremely unfortunate habit of referring to the Japanese competitor as "the Jap", to the obvious discomfort of those around me with an earpiece). At the archery, though, the commentary in the earpiece actually just mirrored the announcements coming over the PA, which made is rather less useful. 

Still, it should be really handy at the Olympic Stadium, as it can be quite tricky to follow all the various track and field things which happen concurrently. And, once the Games are over, you can press a couple of buttons and it works as an FM radio.

Robin and the Olympic torch

At the volleyball at Earls Court last night, Robin was lucky enough to sit in an actual Olympic torch which was used during the astonishingly popular relay around the UK (we were popping to the loo during the first match and there was no longer a queue to pose with it, so it seemed daft not to).

Excitement and disappointment at the water polo

 

So, we followed our visit to the Temple of Tat yesterday with a visit to the water polo arena to cheer for Greece in their crucial group match against Australia - with whichever side won qualifying for the knock out rounds. Here's the venue...

And here's what the view looks like from near the top on the left side...

 

And here's the Greek team coming on. Sadly, despite having more shots than the Australians, they couldn't make the most of the chances, and ended up losing easily. A real pity. But it was great to see our kids cheering so proudly for Greece (my wife is Greek) and lovely for their grandparents in Athens to see us on the TV waving our flag each time our boys scored. Just wish Greece could've scored a few more...

A visit to the Olympic Temple of Tat

We were back in the Olympic Park this morning, for the water polo. As the transport is running *so* smoothly during these Games, we got there quite early. So we thought we'd go for a potter in the Temple of Tat that is the London 2012 Megastore. It's HUGE...

As is "Team GB's golden girl" Jessica Ennis (who's so ripped with muscles, she didn't even notice Robin perching on her arm)

There are an awful lot of Wenlocks available. If the people who designed Wenlock could see how OBSESSED my little boys are with him, I would imagine they'd be quite happy. 

Our elder boy wants one of these £15 golden Wenlocks more than anything (and the fact they're now giving a giant one to each athletics gold medalist isn't exactly helping to reduce his desire). And you can only buy them from venues. Hoping that by the time the Paralympics start they'll have reduced the bucket loads of them down to a tenner or something.

While I was taking this next photo, I saw a succession of people coming up saying:
"Ooh, these are nice. What?! £65?!!! Are they mad???!!!!"

This one shows two giant Wenlocks in an Olympic Mini with Robin on the windscreen, obviously. 

And you should've seen the queues at the checkouts... 

Badders and Robin

This morning we were up bright and breezy to head to Wembley for the two men's bronze semi-finals - singles and doubles - which began at 9am. Amazing to read the paper on the way over there, documenting the crazy excitement of yesterday's six gold medals for GBR (we only got ONE in the entire of the 96 Games).

Wembley Arena was one of the venues used last time the Olympics was in London, in 1948, and they actually still have the old pool under the floorboards (one of the reasons people say the arena has poor acoustics for music shows). The weather on the way in was typically London summer...

This badminton serve challenge is a LOT harder than it looks - you get six shuttlecocks, so the maximum possible score is 60, but the record for the entire Games so far is just 34 points. I was pretty pleased to get 6 points. My pal Nick (pictured) and plenty of others got the big zero. 

In the first match we saw, the Chinese guy beat the South Korean guy to win the men's singles bronze in a long three setter. It was great to see how chuffed the Chinese fella was. You'd sort of imagine that with them winning so many golds, bronze wouldn't mean that much. But he was properly delighted when he won.

And then it was the doubles, which was Malaysia vs South Korea. Malaysia haven't won any medals in these Games yet, so as underdogs had most of the crowd rooting for them, with these guys doing a good job of cheer leading.

Sadly, though, it wasn't to be, as the Malaysian pair blew a big lead in the first set and then quickly lost the second. Another great session, though. It's just such an incredible opportunity to see great sport played by some of its absolute finest players. 

My first double header tomorrow - water polo in the morning, volleyball in the evening.

Walk like an Olympian...

One curious aspect of these Games has been the vast over-estimations by the organisers of how long it takes to walk somewhere. The travel website says it takes 26 minutes to walk from my house to Hitchin station: I usually do it in half that. Then there was a sign at Custom House DLR station the other day saying it was 8 minutes to the Excel: it took less than three.

And then this morning, switching from train to tube in Hampstead, they were claiming this journey from a lamp post to where the Underground sign is would take 2 minutes: it was more like 20 seconds. You can only assume they're trying to make us trudging spectators feel like record-breaking Olympians. 

At the beach, miles from the sea

 

Just back from this morning's badminton, here's a wee blog about the beach volley, which is genuinely one of my favourite spectator sports. Unfortunately, when you say you're going to see it, people treat you a bit like you're off to a strip club - all nudges and winks - as if the women there couldn't possibly be taken seriously because they wear bikinis. Which is, of course, deeply annoying and unfair. But then  the situation is not helped by the beach volley authorities, who force the female players to wear the skimpy outfits (unless it's below 15 degrees), thus exacerbating the problem.

Amyway, got to say, for a temporary arena, this was an enormously impressive one....

It's also the first time we've seen proper taps to fill bottles with, rather than a couple of low pressure water fountains. The irony being, of course, that there was nobody filling bottles. Most of the exuberant crowd wanted to drink something stronger than water. In fact, during the short gap between the two matches of our session, I popped to the loo and was amazed to see huge bar queues that must've been taking at least 30 minutes. Seems a bit daft to miss so much of the session just to get a beer, but then I guess it was Saturday evening. 

So here's the arena, which is on Horse Guard's Parade in central London, a stone throw's from Buckingham Palace. The capacity is apparently around 15,000, and the atmosphere - as tends to be the case at beach volley games - was being very skilfully ramped up by the announcer and his music. We saw two matches - Latvia against Germany men's (won by the favoured Germans) and a big upset in the women's, where the Czechs, ranked 11 in the world. beat the Brazil pair, who were ranked 2, in a three set match. It really was a cracking game - the athleticism of the players in this sport is just incredible. It's been amazing to see people raving about beach volley during these Games. Really hope it continues to get some proper TV exposure once they're over. 

Of course, they also like to have dancers during breaks at beach volley, but the vibe was much more tongue-in-cheek / kitsch than the straight-up bikini babes they had in Athens. 

Um, here is the Brazil flag. 

And another one of that incredible backdrop. 

And then it was off to the pub with an old mate from college to watch that incredible athletics gold rush in the athletics stadium. What an amazing Games this is turning out to be. You don't hear many people grumbling about it any more.

At the beach volley...

There's quite a view. First match starts in 10 minutes...

Back at the ping pong

Had another very enjoyable session at the table tennis at the Excel this morning - where we saw the first round of the women's team event. There were four matches going on concurrently, with the format being best of five matches: first they play a singles, then another singles, then a doubles, and if a team hasn't won 3-0 already, they move on to more singles to decide it. Takes a bit of getting used to trying to concentrate with all that happening, but you soon realise you just need to focus on one match.

Actually, three of the matches were 3-0 drubbings and over within an hour (of a session billed to last three hours). Luckily, in the one right in front of us, Poland gave Singapore a really good go, despite being massive underdogs. In fact, one of the Poles actually beat Feng, the Singapore player I saw narrowly lose her semi-final the other day, and who picked up the bronze. Poland - whose team also included an incredible player with only one full arm - made a real contest of it, but eventually lost 3-1, long after the other three matches (and, slightly annoyingly, the in-ear commentary) had finished.

Saw this at the Excel. Ah, memories...

Harsh

 

(This was near the Excel Centre, which we're back at tomorrow for more table tennis.)

Good arrows at Lord's

Click any of the pictures to see them bigger

And so it was to Lord's cricket ground in North London this morning for my third London 2012 event - the archery. As well as being perhaps the most famous cricket ground in the world, Lord's is an extremely lovely place...

 

They even have a Robin the Robin gate...

As we discovered in Athens, although it's quite hard to see the arrows themselves, archery is an oddly compelling spectator sport, with some genuinely thrilling moments. I was particularly chuffed to see Viktor from Ukraine - the current Olympic champion who had to listen to the tannoy announcer / commentator telling the crowd that he really hadn't been on form recently - winning a dramatic sudden death play-off in his 1/32 round, and then going on to cruise through his 1/16 round.

Archery is also a sport in which the women are just as good as the men: we saw about a dozen of each sex and of the two perfect 30 scores - 3 x bullseye 10 - that we saw, one came from a man and the other from a woman (and they all shoot from the same place). In fact, that female 30 came against the plucky Brit, Amy Oliver, who won her first match that we saw, but then went out to an Indonesian on some amazing form in her 1/16 match (where her opponent scored an incredible 28, 28, 28 and 30 in the four sets). As the woman next to me in another friendly, chatty crowd said, it could easily be a mixed event.

Still, it was great to see my first Brit of the Games. The response from the crowd was quite something - massive roars and Union Jacks ahoy!

Robin even made a new Team GB-supporting friend...

Saying that, their friendship didn't last long, as the chap on the right was gobbled up by a hungry 2-year-old shortly after this photo was taken.

I've got a day off the Olympics tomorrow (I already feel a little bereft). Will post some of the photos I haven't got round to posting yet. And then on Friday it's back to the table tennis. Can't wait...

Robin meets an actual Olympian!

 

Here's Robin about 45 minutes ago, on the train home from the archery, with Sergui Fofanoff from Brazil's equestrian team. Having helped Sergui get his enormous bag onto the train at Kings Cross, we had a bit of a chat as we got off the train. He said he was pretty pleased with his team's 9th-placed finish and that he'd enjoyed what was his fourth Olympics. Then he gave our little boys a Team Brazil pin badge each - which absolutely made their day. What a lovely chap.  

Top times at the table tennis

My Olympic adventures continued today with the women's table tennis semi finals at the Excel centre. Table tennis was actually one of the few sports we wanted to see in Athens but didn't manage to (I used to play league table tennis as a lad), so it was a treat to have tickets to a couple of important matches like this.

The first match - between Ding Ning from China (the World Number 1) and Singapore's Feng Tianwei was an absolute belter. Ding Ning won the first two games easily and it looked like the match would be over in no time. But then Feng - cheered on by most of a packed crowd - embarked on an amazing and unlikely comeback. Ding Ning still won eventually - 4 games to 2 - but there was some incredible table tennis played. If you're reading this in the UK within seven days of me posting, do check out the astonishing rally at 45m 15s on the iPlayer here. Just incredible.

The second match, between Japan's Kasumi Ishikawa and China's Li Xiaoxia never quite hit those heights, but it was still a genuine thrill to be there. Wasn't sure how much of spectator sport table tennis would be - but I'd love to see more of that quality again. There was a great atmosphere in there again today too. London is really taking to these Games.

Actually, it's great to see how the Olympics being in London is making so many people in the UK discover that football isn't the only worthwhile spectator sport. I've seen people raving about beach volley, water polo and handball, among others. I'm hoping that one legacy of these Games was that sports like that get more of a look-in with mainstream TV coverage.

Anyway, best get to bed - got to be up in about 6 hours to head to the archery at Lord's. Again, can't wait.

Robin and the BBC studio

Here's Robin in front of the BBC's Olympic Park studio yesterday. Given the snide criticism the Beeb get from the media (particularly the Daily Mail) about the costs of their coverage of big events like this, it's been a very canny move to stick the studios on top of some shipping containers. It screams "frugal" and "every expense spared". (And we heard several people at the Park mention their budget-conscious choice.) Yet it actually does the job rather well.

Btw, the BBC coverage so far - give or take the odd difficulty with the cycling road race - has been great too.

Re tickets

Now, I keep reading / hearing people saying how upset they are about the empty seats at the Games, because they couldn't get tickets to anything. But tickets were available. At good prices. You really just had to keep trying. (That said, of course, the empty seats are still annoying.)

Hoop dreams at our first event

Click any of the photos to see them bigger (they didn't do that on Blogger in 2004...)

So, eight years after I signed off my Athens Olympic odyssey with the men's handball final (*love* handball), my London2012 adventure began at 9am at the Basketball Arena, for a women's basketball double header (China vs Croatia and Turkey vs Czech Republic).

Despite all the pre-Games hoopla about possible transport issues, getting there was straightforward enough. Tube from a mate's at Seven Sisters to Highbury and Islington was fine, as was the train from Highbury and Islington to Stratford. Then after a five minute queue, we were through security and into the Olympic Park.

 

Here we are, heading in, with the stadium in the background. Now, obviously the only Olympic Park I have to compare London to is Athens, and I was a little surprised by how simple and un-flashy the London site is by comparison. There's a big viewing tower, which is quite a sight, but they're using that to make money (you have to pay to go up) and there are none of the big architectural statements like this amazing walkway which Athens had - which was, like the entire site, paved with marble (long since ripped up).

What the London site does have is amazing green spaces, which we took a shortcut through on the way back to the station after the basketball. Actually, even with the shortcut it was a good 20 minute walk. It's a huge site.

And so to the basketball itself, which was a lot of fun. The Chinese won their game easily, and we stayed for half of the Turkey vs Czech match, which ended up being much closer than it looked at the point where we headed home (our five-year-was shattered by then - not something we had to worry about in Athens).

As was often the case in 2004, some of the most entertaining things happened between the sporting moments - with dance troupes, and an affable US announcer who had people on the big screen kissing the person next to them or pretending to play bongos. All of which made for a lovely atmosphere in a very busy arena (the only empty bits were the athletes/official seats - which, of course, were also the best seats).

 

Really fun day. Now looking forward to the table tennis semi final at the Excel tomorrow.

(Btw, as I haven't updated this blog in *such* a long time, I'm well aware that very few people will read this. But it's been so nice to be able to read back over all those old August 2004 posts - unearthing so many forgotten memories and details - that I thought I'd bang these quick updates up after every event, just so that I've got them to look back on too. But if you have stumbled upon this somehow, it's nice to have you along.)