It all started last Saturday when I had a visit from my brother who asked if I was interested in going to London the next day (Sunday 5th August 2012) to watch the Olympics. He had managed to get tickets that day including some extremely sought-after tickets for the stadium to watch the athletics!
How could I turn down a chance of a lifetime opportunity like that; we set off for London at 5.00am the next day and after parking and getting the tube, we arrived at the extremely impressive Excel centre in the docklands area.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Excel Arena |
The Excel building is huge and houses indoor Olympic events including Wrestling, boxing, fencing, weight lifting and our event Table Tennis (or ping-pong that we were calling it). We watched over four hours of quarter final team performances between China and Singapore (for which my Brother bought a Chinese flag that he was waving between points) and a very close game between Hong Kong and Japan.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Mens Table Tennis Teams |
The arena was packed and we were treated to some excellent games and jaw-dropping rallies from the players. When the ping-pong finished we made our way via the tube to the Olympic park. First impressions were how clean, tidy and well organised it was and after passing through the airport style security checks we began to look around.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Olympic Park |
We had all afternoon in the Olympic park until early evening when we needed to head for the Olympic stadium so had plenty of time to soak up the atmosphere and have a good look around. We soon began to appreciate the enormity of the place and did lots of walking and taking in the sights.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Around the Park |
The Olympic stadium itself is the centre piece of the park and is enormous. It seats 80,000 people however seems a lot bigger and has a beautiful presence.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Olympic Stadium |
Close by to the stadium is the Orbit, love it or hate it, initially I found it quite odd but began to quite like it as the afternoon wore on.
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| London 2012 Olympics - The Orbit |
The landscape of the Olympic park has been very well planned with and has a mature almost wild feel to it with lots of flowers and trees; it is hard to imagine that the park has only recently been built and feels like it has always been here.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Olympic Park Landscape |
They have even thought about the flooring with a mixture of traditional tarmac, wooden decked flooring and this beautiful multi-coloured floor used throughout the park.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Olympic Park Floor |
We took a breather and escaped the endless meandering crowds and visited the Park Live area to watch the Big screen TV.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Park Live area |
We then continued our walk around the Olympic park and witnessed the different architecture around the park. From the Athletes village that reminded me of Eastern Europe blocks of flats...
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| London 2012 Olympics - Athletes Village |
...To the beautiful wooden exterior of the Velodrome.
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| London 2012 Olympics - The Velodrome |
It was now time for our evening entertainment within the Olympic stadium. Armed with our Team GB Great Britain flags we entered the stadium and it was awesome! The stadium was much bigger than I expected and as always so well organised.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Inside the stadium |
We had a great night’s entertainment including Gold medal ceremonies for Greg Rutherford (long jump) and Mo Farah (1000 meters), Christine Ohuruogu winning a silver medal (400m), 400 metres hurdles, women’s triple jump, men’s high jump, men’s 1500m, men’s hammer, men’s steeplechase and then the highlight of the night watching Usain Bolt win a gold medal in the 100m final...Wow what a day!
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| London 2012 Olympics - Athletics |
My fondest memory of the London 2012 Olympic games has to be of the ‘Games Makers’, an army of volunteers who provide help, directions and a very warm welcome to all the visitors to the Olympics. They always had smiles on their faces and went out of their way to help and many entertained the crowds whilst we queued to enter venues.
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| London 2012 Olympics - Olympic Park at Night |
What a brilliant day and one I am unlikely to have again in my lifetime (it isn’t often the Olympics comes to Britain) and a day I will never forget.
Mick
