Gold
I’ll hold my hands up. I have been a right old misery guts when it has come to the London Olympics and my mood has switched from damn right disappointment to indignation.
Those early days with half empty stadiums royally pissed me off as I had spent so many hours trying to navigate LOCOG’s cumbersome and ludicrous ticketing policy yet came away empty handed. We planned to spend these couple of weeks in London fully immersing ourselves in the ‘greatest show on earth,’ yet after failing miserably to get any tickets, I stuck two fingers up at my home town (we have a flat in Stratford too) and knowing the television coverage in Bermuda would be shocking, we took ourselves off to Chicago first and now we are in Costa Rica, which incidentally, is beautiful.
However, today was a magical day for British sport, and 5,500 miles away sat, well mostly swam, with a lot of staring at the television in the pool bar, was a very, very proud Brit. Six golds, the greatest haul since 1908. Its a beautiful thing and Jess certainly is!
Of course it went without saying that our football team went out on penalties in the quarter finals.
Since a week ago I have pretty much seen all of the Opening Ceremony after being at a wedding rehearsal in Chicago last Friday, and Danny Boyle showcased the countries modern history in a massively inventive production. We were out in a Chicago bar that night and with eyes all around me glued to the television screens, I felt proud to say to whoever asked, or just looked in my direction: “Yep, it’s London’s Olympic Opening Ceremony, and yes, I was born there.”
Bermudian television pictures are coming from Jamaica and thankfully I only had endure the amateurish production for a couple of days, otherwise it has been NBC and even Costa Rica’s coverage (utilising Olympic Broadcasting Services) has been a huge step up from the IMC.
To give you some insight, one evening last week it took me five minutes to realise that I was watching the badminton with swimming commentary before the audio dropped out altogether. Ex-pats and Bermudians alike are up in arms at the way the local cable and national channels have handled the coverage.
I was talking to my son earlier and he has not moved his bony arse from the sofa for over a week and has had the remote control stuck on BBC1. Sadly he didn’t get any Olympic tickets because I failed miserably, but at least he has the second-best thing, the BBC, and he was full of it although disappointed about local lad Jack Green, who he knows, falling in the 400m hurdles today.
Anyway, today was a magical day and I am horribly jealous of those able to get there to cheer our athletes on and be able to consign such an inspirational and historical event to memory. Let’s hope we have more days like today. Somehow, somewhere I will be watching, jealously, but proudly.
CA, up here in the Great White North (stinking hot and very humid at the moment), we are very fortunate in that the Canadian television networks formed a consortium and are providing “live” coverage all day long, in real time, with different events, on three channels, with the evenings devoted to highlights, inteviews and wrap-ups. Just the best, and yes, with Canada targeting a top twelve finish, we are right on target, so there is the pride thing going on as well, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent.
BBC coverage has covered evry event I think if you navigate the red button. At times it really lacks on screen info such as the number of laps completed, or who is in the lead, that you just know Sky would provide. But given the breadth of coverage you can’t complain.
after an event a camera will run while the stadium empties, and there is no commentary.its like someone has left the camera running and walked out, telling the last person to switrch lights and camera off! but its quite nice to watch for some strange reason!
On the ticket front we saw volleyball this morning at earls court. chatted to some very nice dutch who hade been to wimbledon twice, seen two hockey matches , and two volleyball sessions. they’d had no problems getting tickets from their official olympic agency.
In the first game we saw trhe Aussies get a surprise win against Poland. Reckon about 60% of the crowd were Polish. Presumably they got their tickets after the fixtures were announced – unlike us. about 20% of the crowd were Brits – so I guess that when we put our initial bid only 20% of volleyball tickets were made available to us, the rest being held for countries competing on the day. Sort of makes sense, but I sill feel aggrieved that in my own country I can’t get near an event involving my own country.
Pembury Addick
Well said PA. There looks to have been a lot of overseas fans at events. A ton of Americans especially although maybe that is because mostly I have watched US TV, yet I know a lot Americans that had tickets for games/competitions involving their countrymen. Not knocking it because that it what a global event should be like, but obviously shows how few tickets went into the original ballots.
Paralympic tickets are also really hard to get hold off, and I wonder how many empty seats will be at those events?
I managed to last week get paralympics athletics tickets for Monday 3 Sept at the Olympic Stadium – I was astonished! They arrived next day so no catch!
Trouble is CA I’ve started to get anal about the ticket malarkeyand end up watching for empty seats instead of the sport!