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...