Olympic adventures: Event Days 2, 3 and 4

posted by LHiggs, a Women Talk Sports blogger
Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 5:54am EDT

About LHiggs:

Former competitive fast-pitch softball player and dancer turned steeplechaser with a best finish of 2nd in the NCAA mile and a finalist in the 2008 Olympic Trials 3000m steeplechase. Powered by the Ne...more

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I finally have some downtime after a whirlwind of Olympic events. No one could accuse us of wasting our time here! Over the last few days we have seen rowing, the women's triathlon, the bronze medal men's singles and doubles badminton (which I finally know how to spell) and the women's marathon. Unfortunately we had to admit energy defeat and sell off our gymnastics tickets, but I'm glad someone else got to enjoy it. Apparently it's really hard for UK residents to actually obtain tickets. The following photo is of the queue outside of the Hyde Park viewing venue, which is seriously just a bunch of big screens for watching. This gives you an idea of how many people would love to have tickets to an event in 3 dimensions.

Hyde Park

Craigslist is hopping! I originally read that eBay and Craigslist weren't going to allow ticket re-selling and that the organizing body was going to spend time policing all online forums. That has obviously not been the case, probably due to the criticism over all the empty seats in the first few games because re-selling was not allowed. I am glad they finally realized that it's in everyone's best interest to allow a secondary market. Considering how hard it was to get tickets even two years ago, there are doubtfully any agencies that did a massive buy-up. Most re-sellers ended up with tickets to more than one event at the same time, or tickets they couldn't really afford in the first place.

The women's football matches out in Newcastle were less than half full, but everything since then has been packed. And we haven't even been to a marquis event yet!

Rowing was an awesome experience. London, not surprisingly, made it very easy to find. When I initially looked up directions, it seemed overwhelming. But, thanks to a special London 2012 iPhone app and bright pink signage, we had no problem finding a train out to Slough, where we were greeted with an endless queue of double-decker buses to the venue. We had finish line tickets, but spent the first few races by the start and slowly moved our way to our seats. As has been the usual, we were mostly surrounded by Brits in the stands, and they had some great performances. It's so great when a crowd cheers and sighs in exasperation in unison.

The next morning we had a great idea to run around and view the triathlon from multiple spots. This was such a failed idea. Thanks to the publicity that "free" events have received, everyone in that Hyde Park queue was in attendence for the triathlon. I cannot even imaging what it must be like for a triathlete to have an entire race lined with fans 3-4 deep, when they are used to courses that go off onto roads with maybe one or two fans scattered throughout.

We also had no idea what was going because the announcer sort of lost interest in announcing once the UK athlete was out of contention, and the little announcing he did do was drowned out by multiple helicopters over head. Once the result-specific iPhone app updated, we finally knew that the first US athlete (and NYAC athlete) Sarah Groff finished fourth.

The next morning we got up early and hiked out to Wembley Arena for badminton. This was a bit of a teaser for Josh, as we will be back out there for the men's gold medal football match in a few days and there's probably nothing in the world that he is more excited about.

For now, though, let's just say that this morning was a educational experience. I now know the rules of badminton and am looking forward to playing at the New York AC when I return home. More than the sport, though, the fans were worth buying tickets for. I'm not sure why it surprises me that there are people in the world that take badminton as seriously as I take track. I am sure that even the trampoline has super-fans.

We had to bolt out of badminton before the conculsion of the doubles match in order to spectate the marathon. For this "free" event we got lucky and found a sparsely-populated spot on the far end of the course where we could spectated in two spots by jogging through an alleyway. Thanks to my need to find a bathroom, I also discovered a bar halfway down the alley that had a big-screen showing the race, which had only been discovered by five other people. So, we watched in those two spots and sat at the bar while they completed the rest of the loop. Since they did the eight-mile loops three times, we got to do some repetitions.

The marathon was cool, but after the first loop, largely disappointing. Once Shalane lost contact with the first group, I lost all connection to caring about who won. After Deena and Meb's medals back in Athens and Shalane's surprise bronze in Beijing, I was expecting someone I could get excited about to pull off a surprise medal. But unfortunatly it was largely predictable and kind of a buzzkill.

Things are just getting started, as we have women's beach volleyball coming up tomorrow, followed by men's the next day and then two days of track and field plus the men's gold medal soccer match. This is where stuff gets really exciting!

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2012 Olympic Games in London

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MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:

LHiggs

Former competitive fast-pitch softball player and dancer turned steeplechaser with a best finish of 2nd in the NCAA mile and a finalist in the 2008 Ol...
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2012 Olympic Games in London