2nd August: Swimming

Well if ever my new-found interest for getting fit ever came in handy...
Today I had a ticket for swimming but it was right up in the gods.

And I do mean the gods - one row from the back of the "fins" put on for extra seating - up here there are no concession stands, no facilities so I was here for the duration!

First up were the Men's 50m Freestyle hits - basically one length of frantic splashing...
We had one Brit, who sadly came 7th in his heat.

Next up it was the Women's 800m Freestyle, including one Rebecca Adlington, but first up for Britain was Ellie Faulkner.

If the cheering for any Brits was deafening enough in this particular arena, it reached an unimaginable crescendo when Becky came out to swim.

You need to understand that this place is kept really warm for the swimmers and the combination of that and the fever pitch of excitement made it feel like a cauldron.

Becky built up a lead in the first twi lengths and stayed - and at every time the roaring from the crowd just got louder.  She built up an effective lead but the time was well outside the world record, but she had qualified for the final, which would be in the evening session.

Initially I thought this was a ticket for the whole day, so was a little disappointed that it was only the morning session - then again, I was going to get to see this guy...

Phelps and Chad Le Clos were the fastest qualifiers from their respective heats.

We finished up with the Women's 200m Backstroke, with Lizzie Simmonds going for GBR.

Thankfully Brits wearing red caps made life a bit easier from my place up in the rafters!
We were done for the day, so I headed out and quickly caught up with a friend who was coming to watch the volleyball, and then as I headed off for lunch,, I met some Americans who were watching a variety of sports and had a great chat.

That being said - it was a relief to get back home in broad daylight for once, as I would be back in Stratford for the morning again.

1st August: Tennis

Federer (Switzerland) vs Istomin (Uzbekistan)

Day 3 (and my second day) dawned to grey skies and humid conditions.  It actually started spitting with rain as we came into the grounds, and remained a little soggy – even as they brought the players out.

Federer actually did look very reluctant as they came out, almost dragging his feet, and almost immediately the rain got heavier and they were taken straight off.

The delay was about 45 minutes and out they came again.

Federer started with a comfortable hold, and broke Istomin in the next game, consolidating with a hold.

Both were taking a bit of time to find their range, and not surprisingly the court was a little bit slippery,

Istomin got to grips with his surroundings, getting himself on the board and then breaking Federer In the next game.

Another Istomin hold got things back on serve until Federer’s serve with the scores at 5-5.  A heavy rain shower suspended play for a short while.

I took advantage of this to go find another friend there for the day and give her a ticket for the Handball we would be seeing on Friday.

Play started back again and Federer started the better, holding and despite taking some time to close it out, got the decisive break and took the first set 7-5.

At the start of the second set, Istomin took another tumble and this time took a bit longer to hobble around.

There were still some inconsistencies on Federer’s forehand and backhand but this set started in exactly the same way as the first, with Federer taking an early lead with an immediate break.

A ball that was stuck into he crowd, was thrown back.  Badly!

It bounced off the heads of the people In the front.

Istomin launched his comeback and there could have been a chance as Federer did not look as convincing as he usually does in early tournament rounds.

But it was shortlived, even with launching his racquet skywards to reach an overhead, and Federer went through.

Azarenka (Belarus) v Petrova (Russia)

With the weather improving all the time, my friend had to resort to buying some sun-cream!

It was nice to see Petrova again – it’s been a while – but the baseline slugging and warming weather made this match a little soporific.

Games went with serve, although occasionally out of nowhere, Petrova threw in a huge kick serve.

It didn’t take long for Nadia to be complaining to her team but kept things close to take the frst set to a tiebreak (with the umpire starting the scoring at 15/0 before correcting herself).

It took Vika a while to get herself going, but she finally started to step up a gear and took thhe first set.

Nadia was needled and there was a lot of racquet throwing around by Nadia, but somehow the momentum shifted back as she broke Vika.

In fact it wasn’t clear if Nadia was playing better, or Vika just started playing badly again.

Racquets were being tossed about by both girls now and both were fighting hard.

A forlorn challenge from Nadia on matchpoint but it was Azarenka to go through.

Sharapova (Russia) v Lisicki (Germany)

It seemed ironic that the last time both of us were at Wimbledon, it was on court 1, on a windy and sometimes rainy day, watching Sharapova and Lisicki.

On that occasion, Lisicki dominated Sharapova and went into the Quarterfinals.

The game started with holds all round, and Lisicki was having to dig deep to hold.

She finally got the break at 4/3 which saw Maria slamming her racquet to the ground.

But Sabine, serving for the first set, threw in a costly DF, and was subsequently broken to love.

What was noticeable was how low Sabine was getting down to shots and between them they took the first set to a tiebreak.

The tiebreak had it all, unforced errors, and then blistering serving from Lisicki, Sharapova forgetting to change ends and a daring squash-shot slap from Sabine to draw level at 8/8.

Sabine eventually took the tiebreak 10/8.

My friend had to leave to watch Beach Volleyball, so I met up with another friend who was a Games Maker at Wimbledon, so she joined me to watch the final set, as we got to the court just as Maria took the second set.

The light was beginning to fade, and started with trading breaks.

It would depend very much on who would blink first, and that was Sharapova who took the lead t 5/3, serving out to advance.

31st July: Basketball

And so my FIRST PROPER EVENT!

Having had the amazing experience of the opening ceremony it was time to get down to business, and my first event to watch was the Men’s Basketball Preliminary rounds.

TfL had overplanned a little, sending a massive double decker bus when the kids are in school.

Today I tried out the Overground service – this was a risk because it used to be a long standing joke that this service was  almost always cancelled when I used to commute into the city.

But it certainly was running and I came slap bang into Stratford, which was heaving with shoppers and Olympic Park folks

I met up with my friend in the late afternoon at Stratford so that we could soak in the atmosphere of the Olympic Park now that events were up and running in the park.

Of course – this was my first chance to go hit the London 2012 Megastore and let’s just say some serious damage was done to my credit card so that I could support Team GB properly attired!

We wandered around for a bit and then headed to the “Wedding Cake” structure and spotted some more unusual eateries and we thought we would try them out in between the two matches.

It was really nice NOT to be in a UK based crowd for once, and just soak up the atmosphere of other fans going nuts for their teams.

Thankfully my friend is a US sports aficionado so I got a crash course in Basketball rules while the match was going on – which really helped in terms of perspective as you could then see and understand what was going on.

The first match up was France and Argentina – with hefty crowds supporting both.

The game was really close – France would seem to surge ahead and then all of a sudden Argentina would be right up there with him, but in the end France edged it.

What was irritating was that when we decided to go for dinner, we were not allowed out of the Baskbetball arena perimeter to get access to a wider range of food, and we spent so much time wandering around to try and find alternatives, only to be told that apparently there had been announcements to get food before going in (an hour or so ago!).

Also – I have to say eating at around 10pm was not my cleverest idea – note to self: don’t do that again!

Anyway – I queued for an unappealing posh sausages in a bap, and then headed back in for the next match up: USA vs Tunisia.

I felt quite proud of myself to recognise names like Lebron James, Kevin Durrant and Kobe Bryant.

Tunisa actually made quite a spirited start, taking some points off the US, but pretty soon the dream team started to do their thing.  Apparently, according to my friend, the things they were doing were “sick”… which is good!

This was a very different match – Tunisia went off the boil as you might expect until the end, but by then it was pretty much a foregone conclusion and was left wondering of the scoreboard could handle scores in the hundreds (yes it can!).

Of course no Stratford train to come home on, so we were back to last train homesville, this time around 2 am but again the train services were all OK on the way home.