First day at Olympic Park29 Jul 2012
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Cycling velodrome and outdoor screen area
circulating drinks
fans
| In case you are wondering, this is the vital information everyone here wants to know. It's a walk of only 5-10 minutes from the Stratford Railway to the security area, then its pretty quick going thru' security - they aren't being too overzealous which usually happens in the early days until they sort things out. All good so far, just need to walk from the front entrance to the basketball arena - holy hell! Its a solid 30 minute walk once you are inside just to get to the basketball. This place is BIG. I have been to the Olympic parks in Sydney and Beijing also and all of them are impressive, but this one is just vast. I took a photo of that weird arse torch/tower thing, but its not worth putting up. Will have to climb it one day, but the scale of it is so disproportionate to everything around it. They have a whole group of people circulating with water, beer, flavoured drinks, and some food. There are also a lot of food tents selling all sorts. Despite all that there was a huge 'first day' mistake as they completely under catered and the entire park pretty much ran out of food by @6pm. You can take food in, and we will be from now on. Stevie was desperately seeking something to eat and headed to one of the stalls with 'sushi' written on the canopy only to find they didn't sell it. She very clearly and precisely explained to them that it is quite misleading to advertise a food you don't actually have even if you haven't completely run out of food LOL. The basketball stadium is great, and as we found out - only a temporary building. Apparently after these games the whole thing can be flat packed and is being shipped off to Brazil for the next games. It's incredible they can do that on such a scale. The cycling velodrome is beautiful and there is a grassy outdoor area with a big screen. We saw 2 sessions of women's basketball yesterday (4 games - don't ask why). It was good to get an idea of where they are, but clearly the quality of the teams will improve as the tournament progresses. I have to say, I didn't think the USA were as unbeatable as they were in Beijing - have to see how much they change as they get it together. |
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