Travel.Happiness.Life. : Destination London - Watching History Being Made LIVE

With a few days of the 2012 London Olympic Games still to go, I think it would be fair to say that London has delivered a brilliant games for athletes, officials, volunteers and spectators. I write this blogpost as a spectator rather than one of the volunteers (many of you may have read that I performed/marshalled in opening ceremony and will be an athlete marshal in the closing ceremony).

Wem-ber-ley

My first event as a spectator was on the first Tuesday of the games at Wembley Stadium to watch Team GB Ladies take on the mighty Brazil. These tickets were not hard to come by and there were still a few remaining on the day of the game. The crowd of over 70,000 represented the largest crowd ever for a ladies football match in UK and I was proud to be there.
The atmosphere was brilliant and was my first experience of this new wave of national pride that has swept Great Britain during the Olympics (although arguably it started with the jubilee earlier in 2012).
Great Britain ladies delivered too, beating the much-fancied Brazilians 1-0 and even had the luxury of being able to miss a penalty.
After the game, the organisation of getting people out and onto trains couldn't have been more efficient and confirmed to me what many people have said about the excellent organisation of the games. This has been aided in no small way by the thousands of 'games makers' - volunteers who have given their time to make these Olympics very special.

The teams line up

Me and my mate Sam

On the Wednesday of the second week of the games (8th Aug) I decided to utilise my performers pass and get into the park to sample the atmosphere and watch some of the events on the giant screens. The pass itself is one of the big perks of being in the closing ceremony as it is not possible to get into the park without a ticket for an event.

As welI as meeting up with my mate Matt, a few more of my ceremonies colleagues came down - we tried to use our passes to sneak into the stadium but had no joy. Instead we got a great place in the park and watched some athletics and hockey.

With Natalie, a fellow group 49 drummer.

I had been looking forward to Thursday 9th August for over a year since I found out that I had managed to get tickets for the 200m men's final in the ticket ballot. I applied for the 200m rather than the 100m as there are more finals on the same night with the 200m, where as the schedule for the 100m contains more heats. The main draw of course was Usain Bolt, the fastest human to have ever walked the planet but something else became my highlight of the evening...

My sister was the lucky recipient of my second ticket, kindly offered by my wife who knew that Debbie would probably enjoy it more (like me, Debbie is a big athletics fan). Although I had been in the park many times, it was nice to see it through Debbie's eyes.

With my sister Debbie

Having spent many hours in the stadium rehearsing for the opening ceremony with different stages and features in place, it was strange to see it as it was intended...as an athletics stadium. That said, it is a fine 80,000 capacity stadium and we had great seats in the upper tier opposite the finishing line.

My highlights in order:

1. The sheer noise generated by the partisan GB crowd when any Team GB athlete was introduced. Add lots of flags being waved equals hairs standing up on the back of your neck and a great feeling of national pride. With the Olympics very unlikely to return to GB in my lifetime, it was a unique experience.

2. We witnessed a world record! Kenya's David Rudisha set a new world record in the 800m. It looked fast, the split time was 49 secs and I remember shouting wooooooooooooo when I saw he'd broken it. What a thing to see!

3. Usain Bolt creates history by becoming the only man to defend both 100m and 200m Olympic titles. I can now say I saw Usain Bolt run live and that I saw a 19.32 200m. He is a phenomenon.