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Posts from the ‘Olympics’ Category

Feb 22

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Ciao bella

Well, sadly that is it for four more years. That’s my armchair coaching and commnentating on sports I know little or anything about over until next time. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person shouting at the tele’ for Bruce Mouat to takeout or Charlotte Bankes to straightline!

I was lucky to see a lot of this year’s Winter Olympics and I enjoyed BBC, TNT and NBC’s coverage. The closing ceremony this afternoon was also stunning. The Italians are cool bastards, aren’t they. I do need to get myself to that Roman amphitheater in Verona that was built in 30 AD. Breathtaking.

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Jul 31

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Awe-inspiring

I am loving the Olympics so far. I’m completely immersed in it. Swimming, gymnastics, tennis, rowing, women’s rugby, BMX, that crazy canoe race, whatever is on I am glued to it.

GB have had an incredible opening few days with our best ever medal haul at this stage, which could even have been bettered if it wasn’t for many 4th place finishes.

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Jul 25

Olympic breakfast

It’s been a bit of a struggle the almost two-week hole in my life between the final of the Euro’s and tomorrow’s Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. I’d rather poke my eyes out than watch a pre-season friendly, I’m not ready for the new football season yet, so I am all geared up for the greatest show on Earth, the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad.

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Jul 13

20 Years; 20 Places: No.9 Rio

20 Players and 20 Places to celebrate my 20 years of writing this Blog. No order, no ranking, just those that left everlasting memories.

Next up on my 20 Places was one for the bucket list. No. 9 is Rio.

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Feb 20

Winter Olympics

Despite the geopolitics, the host nations’ human rights record, the circus around Kamila Valieva, the spot Peng Shaui competitions, the fake snow, the arid landscapes, Covid restrictions and the whole ROC farce the Beijing Winter Olympics was well watched in our house.

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Oct 18

Flora Duffy Day

My American colleagues are forever mocking me for the amount of national holidays we get in Bermuda. We take the British ones, the American ones, have plenty ourselves and the island’s government are not immune to inventing the random one for good measure.

Nonetheless days off are not to be sniffed at, and we have one today to celebrate Bermuda’s first ever Olympic gold medal won by triathlete Flora Duffy in Tokyo. 🏊‍♀️🚴‍♀️🏃🏼‍♀️🥇

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Jul 26

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Flora Duffy wins Bermuda’s first ever gold medal

Wow 🇧🇲🥇

Flora Duffy won Bermuda’s first ever Olympic gold medal tonight in Tokyo, finishing the Triathlon a minute and 14 seconds ahead of GB’s Georgia Taylor-Brown in very wet conditions to send this tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean into raptures.

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Jul 22

Tokyo 2020

It is the longest wait for an Olympic opening ceremony in history, but tomorrow morning my time the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that never looked like happening finally opens.

A year late and stymied by all the regular hosting city controversies of construction, corruption, dodgy resignations of officials and even logo arguments, last year the Tokyo Olympics was taken down by the biggest disease of all.

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Apr 26

Triathlon weekend

There have been a lot of very fit looking people mixing with many slightly larger cruise ship tourists walking around Hamilton these last few days. The antithesis is breathtaking, or out of breath depending on which one they were.

54 men and 47 women will take part in Saturday’s World Triathlon Series, the second in the season’s calendar. Last year was the first time Bermuda had been a host for the ITU’s World Series, and homecoming queen Flora Duffy swept to victory to much delight.

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Feb 18

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Golden

The skeleton. Who an earth invented that? Superb from Lizzy Yarnold, who is from a family of Addicks, to claim back to back Olympic gold medals in the skeleton, basically lying on a metal tray with your nose an inch from a frozen downhill ravine travelling at 80 mph. How a girl from Sevenoaks picks that as a career I will never know.

Yarnold is brilliant in front of the camera. Inspirational, self-deprecating and funny, and the country smiled with her yesterday as she smashed the course record at the sliding centre at Pyeongchang to grab gold as teammate Laura Deas won bronze in what was the most successful day ever for GB at a Winter Olympics.

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Feb 14

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Olympic marvel

I’m enjoying the Winter Olympics and the shear youth and exhilaration of it all. Although I view summer Olympians with massive admiration and reverence, I truly marvel at these young men and women hurtling down mountain sides and iced tunnels at break neck speed.

Pyeongchang, which looks a pretty awe-inspiring location for the Games, is 13 hours ahead of Bermuda but between NBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) we are keeping up with events even if I’m never sure whether we are watching them in real time or on repeat.

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Dec 31

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Happy New Year

As I sit here in my pyjamas with a beer with far too long to wait until midnight I feel content that I don’t have to go out and pretend tonight will be the best night of my life. Movies are downloading, my daughter sits at my feet and we have a fridge full of snacks. Good enough for me.

I turned 50 this year and we spent a couple of memorable weeks in Rio at the Olympics to celebrate it, although I’ll be honest I’ve struggled moving into the next decade of my life. Not physically, I feel good and I think I look alright but it has made me very introspective and I question myself a lot, especially when I wake in the middle of the night, which happens more and more. Must be old age and my eyes are going and my ears are getting bigger as well….

My 2016 had its challenges. Personally and professionally. Questions without answers. Vacillant sometimes, headstrong other times.

Charlton are no longer an escape for me or sadly for the majority of us. I never ever thought my love for them would wane, but incredibly it has and it breaks my heart.
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Aug 21

Don’t blame it on Rio

We left Rio de Janeiro on Friday and took the day flight to Miami and have since very late Friday night been in Sarasota, which meant a late night drive across Alligator Alley. 

As the games closed tonight Rio and the Cariocas managed to pull off the 31st Olympic Games, and it was an unforgettable experience to be apart of it for 10 days. Rio has its issues and they are too big to sweep under the rug and ignore, yet the city and it’s people put on a happy and beautiful show for the world. They have an expression, the Brazilians, fique tranquilo, which means basically not to stress about stuff, because it will work itself out. Well Rio 2016 did. 
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Aug 18

Rio 2016 – Day 9 Track & Field

Our final day in Rio and we ended with a day at the Olympic Stadium watching some athletics. The Olympic Stadium moniker is only being used for the duration of the Games, the real name is the Nilton Santos Stadium, or more fondly known as the Engenhão, and was built for the 2007 Pan American Games and is home to my adopted team Botafogo.

The journey from Barra to Enganhao de Dentro was pretty painful, and eye-opening, and for the first time pretty disorganized. We were met by massive queues when we reached the stadium an hour later than we hoped, but not for the first time our 6-year bebê came in handy with line jumping as preference is given to kids.
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Aug 17

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Rio 2016 – Day 8 Diving 

Women’s 10m diving today. The 2007 built, but slightly crumbling, Maria Lenk Aquatics Center has already hosted some of the earlier water polo and is running with the synchronized swimming as well, get your nose pegs ready for that, but diving is the arena’s main pull with just the men and women’s 10m platform left.

28 women, some young enough looking to be in primary school, took part in qualification today each committing 5 dives, each one different and the 18 divers with the highest score progressed to tomorrow morning’s semi-final. The best 12 then take part in the final later tomorrow.
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Aug 16

Rio 2016 – Day 7 Equestrian 

Trot on. Not my normal sporting activity although I do like the gee gees, but this was slightly different watching the Equestrian team and individual jumping qualification today.

We made our way out to Deodoro, where Brazil’s National Equestrian Centre already existed and an impressive sight it was. The 32,500 seater outdoor arena was built for the 2007 Pan American Games and forms part of the Deodoro cluster of Rio 2016 stadia which includes a mountain bike and BMX track, the modern pentathlon park, where the rugby was held last week as well as the field hockey plus somewhere there was a whitewater rafting and canoe slalom course. I’d like to have seen that.

Nonetheless 4 hours sat in the beating hot sun watching the horses trot around was quite enough. I can’t imagine how hot Rio can get on a warm Summer’s day, but today was toasty and even the beer did not help with my hydration.
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Aug 15

Rio 2016 – Day 6 Rest day

Today was our one day with no tickets for any events, so we decided to cram a visit to the two largest tourist sites in the city into one day, which in hindsight was a bit of an ask.

The first challenge was transport. You can only travel on the BRT and Metro if you have a valid Olympic ticket for that day of competition, we didn’t so we had to cab it around and although not expensive, Rio’s traffic is atrocious. It took an hour to get from our apartment in Barra to Corcovado, where where we met the cog train to ascend 20 minutes up a side of a mountain to see up close the Christ of the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor) statue.
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Aug 14

Rio 2016 – Day 5 Water Polo

A cross between basketball and rugby but played on water, I saw a little bit of water polo when I was younger as I had a good mate who played to national standard and I used to go and watch him occasionally. Water polo is a tough sport and it is plenty physical and what goes on under the water is best not seen!

There are 4 periods of 8 minutes with time outs and sin bins used to stop serial eye gouging. The Olympic men’s water polo is still in the group stage and we saw three games today at the Aquatic Centre, where the night before Michael Phelps signed off with his 23rd gold medal.
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Aug 13

Rio 2016 – Day 4 Beach Volleyball

I got a lot of grief indoors for getting Beach Volleyball tickets and I have had all the jokes about budgie smugglers and only going for the thongs. Well, let me tell you thongs were very much on show, but the blokes, thankfully, took to the sand pit dressed like they were going for a paddle at Margate .

We lucked out that our session’s first game today at the very impressive temporary Copacabana Beach Arena was Brazil’s men against Spain’s men. World v European champions, and a very, very partisan 10,000 crowd made the day such a memorable experience. The atmosphere was a cross between a hyped up NBA play-off game with added DJ help and dance routines and a high energy Brazilian football match at the Maracana.
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Aug 13

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Charlton Athletic 1 Northampton Town 1

I took my protest to Rio and tuned out of the happenings at The Valley and instead tuned into scantily clad women slapping a ball over a net on sand in the name of Olympic sport.

However my always relied upon Mother was updating me during the game and my brother gave me a full blown text report after, but it was fair to say you would all have rather been in my seat at the Copacabana Beach Volleyball Arena. You would also have been surrounded by more people!

Anyway these are my observations. The Canadian girl’s bikini bottom was a shade of red and white. Oh hang on, wrong blog post! Apologies.
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Aug 12

Rio 2016 – Day 3 Gymnastics 

I’m not sure jumping up and down on a trampoline is the most artistic of all gymnastic events but it is a pretty serene sight seeing lithe women fly through the air, throwing all kinds of shapes at high altitude before bouncing back up again like an astronaut in a space station. 

We were at the Rio Olympic Arena today for a little gymnastics action and I wouldn’t say I learnt anything apart from falling out of the trampoline badly affects your score. Otherwise the scoring, and at least the docking of points for defections was hard to fathom, but it was enjoyable nevertheless and excitedly we got to see Great Britain pick up a medal.
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Aug 11

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Rio 2016 – Day 2 Tennis

We are staying in Barra da Tijuca and purposely picked an apartment close to the new BRT station, Jardim Oceanico. And today for our first day of Olympic action we made our way a couple of minutes around the corner to the station so new that the  paint was wet, and the whole journey was easy. 20 minutes most on a brand spanking new bus that floated past traffic in an express lane to get us to Barra’s Parque Olimpico, home to nine different venues including the Tennis Centre, built brand new for the Olympics with an impressive centre court and 15 outside courts, which I would hazard a guess we’re temporary structures.

Barra Olympic Park was previously a Formula One race track and was home to the Brazilian Grand Prix. It was demolished in 2012 to make way for one of the key Rio 2016 centres and will, hopefully, leave the largest sporting legacy to the country once the Olympics has packed it’s rings and moved the circus on.
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Aug 10

Rio 2016 – Day 1 First impressions 

We landed in Rio this morning and my first thoughts were as to whether I had brought enough warm and water proof clothes. It has pretty much drizzled the entire day and fog has shrouded the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue that looks down over the XXXI Olympic city and dark skies have hung over us all day.

The airport, vastly improved by all accounts, was impressive. Clean, efficient and organized with hundreds of Rio 2016 volunteers and camera crews everywhere, it gave us a real sense of occasion when we got off the plane this morning, agreeably still in the same time zone as Bermuda. There is a lot to be said for doing an 9-hour overnight flight but not sending your body clock into a spin.
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Aug 7

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Miami’s Stiltsville

We are using Miami as a staging point for our onward journey to Rio, where we fly to late on Tuesday night for the Olympics. I am a big Miami fan and know the city and it’s assorted environs pretty well. Today however we saw Miami from a different vantage point. From the water.  

We booked a morning boat tour with Ocean Force Adventures, and a 30 ft rigid inflatable boat, or RIB, with our own captain, who doubled as a very knowledgable guide. He took us on a two and half hour tour of Miami’s waters getting up close to the celebrity mansions of Star Island, Palm Island and Fisher Island, the enormous Port of Miami and busy cruise ship terminal (1 in every 7 passenger cruise ships in the world departs from here), Key Biscayne, Biscayne National Park, Cape Florida Lighthouse, the historic Miami River and some mouthwatering views of the downtown Miami, Brickell and South Beach skylines. 
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Jul 23

Rio Olympics

After my London Olympic ticket woe, four years later I was both better prepared and luckier in the quest for event tickets at this summer’s Rio Olympics. Attending an Olympics has sat idle on my bucket list for some time but after the disappointment of not being able to attend London’s momentous occasion, we will be heading down to Rio in a few weeks time to see seven different sports over a ten day period. Surreptitiously it also coincides with my big birthday month, and therefore I was determined to make it happen.

Better research and lessons learnt told me that as a EU citizen I was able to apply for tickets from Authorized Ticket Resellers (ATR) of any European Union member. So I busily searched all over various countries websites and that widened our odds. Brexit will put an end to anyone trying to do that for Tokyo 2020.
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Apr 25

Bermuda invitational race meet

We always try to grab the chance to watch a live event here in Bermuda, especially if it has ‘International’ in it’s description. On Friday night we were at the island’s national stadium to watch the first Bermuda Invitatiomal Permit Atheltics Meet.

Athletes came from the USA, the Caribbean, Great Britain and Africa, and were joined by Bermuda’s best sprinters, hurdlers and middle distance runners. There was also a competitive line up for the men’s long jump and women’s high jump.
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Mar 24

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Olympic disadvantage

There has been a lot of recent conjecture about season ticket renewals amongst Addicks. Since the return to The Valley the club has done an excellent job of marketing and pricing season tickets just right in encouraging supporters to commit up front to home games. Much of this loyalty and not insignificant financial undertaking has been due to the bond between fan and board, a bond that no longer exists. Ironically this is all against the backdrop of the best supporter bond between manager and player for many a year.

Last week a couple of news stories made me concerned about the future of our fan base. West Ham’s move to the Olympic Stadium was confirmed at significant cost to the local council and the taxpayer and not an awful lot to the club. For example I’d be surprised if the £2m a year in rent even covers the maintenance. Plus the sale of Upton Park will more than pay for the Hammers’ outlay of £15m. Gold and Sullivan are not at silly as they look.
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Jan 4

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2012 Top 5 Sporting Moments

Putting the mighty Addicks to one side for the moment, other than the League One title winners, 2012 was a sensational year for sport. There were many screaming at the telly, jumping up and down moments but here were my Top 5 Favourite Sporting Moments of 2012:
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Sep 9

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Paralympics

The final day then of London 2012, an end to an historic and extraordinary 6 weeks. If in a year or two’s time the Olympic Stadium is hosting football, it will be such a shame.

During my very swift weekend visit back to the UK I found myself in Gatwick, Nottingham, Eastbourne and Chislehurst but what I couldn’t be drawn away from was the London Paralympics.

The gripes about the adverts aside, although trust me after watching US telly for 10 years, the UK’s commercial stations are a lot less disruptive, from what I saw Channel 4 were doing a sterling job of showcasing the most watched Paralympics ever.
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Aug 4

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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.

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Jul 18

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Olympic woe

A hop, skip and jump back to London tonight. This trip was originally planned for a couple of weeks with family to get ourselves fully absorbed into the Olympics. Not so.

Copious (more than three) attempts to purchase a range of tickets for a range of sports over a few week period ended up with zilch. No, I lie, I did get some Women’s Preliminary Round (non beach) Volleyball tickets for Earls Court. No disrespect to Earls Court but all of us slogging across London to watch Algeria v Japan just didn’t do it for me, so those tickets went back.

Thus I came incredibly frustrated with the whole Olympic ticket process and called it off as a bad job especially after a couple of very early mornings/late nights tapping away on the computer with millions of others. Don’t get me started on the 250,000 tickets unsold, including athletics, opening and closing ceremonies. LOCOG couldn’t have got the ticketing procedure more wrong. 
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