Olympic fever

I should relate my two bona fide Olympic experiences before they slip into a muddled miasma of recollection, cherished details forever cast to the wind.  The London Olympics may not be an once-in-a-lifetime experience for myself but I’ll never see them in the UK again before very old age.

The first event I attended in person was towards the end of the festival, a late night session on Thursday 9^th for a semi-final of women’s basketball.  Not the first event with which I would associate myself in the normal course of things, but I was determined to see a sport, if not in the Olympic Park, then close to it – the session was held in the O2, temporarily renamed the North Greenwich Arena – and these tickets were ones returned from national associations and corporate sponsors and released by LOCOG just after midnight via the ticketing website.  Naturally, given the clientele to whom they had been awarded, these tickets were not cheap, but no matter; I wasn’t going to pay astronomical prices but £125 seemed fair for a Category A seat and a chance to say ‘I was there’.  Steep, yes, it was towards the upper range of my limit and I baulked at other events where available tickets were £375 a pop.

I had no idea who was in the game but it started at 9 p.m. and so I arrived at what seemed a good time to collect my tickets at the box office at 8.10 p.m.  After coming through airport security-style checks, I searched for the end of the queue. And searched.  And searched.  It appeared never-ending and I asked a volunteer to point me in the right direction.  The tail was near the entrance but that was a false dawn.  At 8.20 p.m., one of the volunteer captains told an old lady just in front of me, who was queuing for ticket collection for an event the next day, that the line would take an hour to an hour and a half to disperse from that point in it (more were arriving behind me) and that she could wait if she wanted, but that it was better to come back the next day; she departed.  An Australian couple behind me were equally miffed at the time to enter, comparing how smooth going to the football had been a few days earlier.  The woman had her iPad and in the course of waiting, through striking up a bit of repartee, I found out that Usain Bolt had won the 200m sprint, the first person ever to defend it an Olympics.  One of the volunteers apologised and in a bit of banter with us said that at least it wasn’t raining.  A Spanish woman pleaded “don’t say that, please,” fearing the tempting of fate.  Edging closer to the box office, we could now see that while there were ten booths, only seven of them were open!  The queue would have been processed a lot quicker had all ten been open.  I would gladly have forsaken apologies if that had been the case.  Eventually, after my mini-Odyssey round the contours around one side of the North Greenwich Arena, I got my tickets and I got to my seat at 9.20 p.m., there were still others at least half an hour behind me in the line.

The game had opened up on the second quarter by then, with the French team ahead of the Russians by seven points.  It was a thorny question of who to support.  I didn’t really want to back a team who was behind, but, for my own sense of self-worth, I didn’t really want to be a glory-hunter either.  I arrived on the method to support the next team to score and as it happened that was the Russians.

My seat was well-upholstered and in a good position to observe the action with the Russians getting to a point or two of their opponents before the French peeled away again on a scoring run.  In the time-outs and between each quarter, there were numerous bouts of entertainment that those watching on TV might only glimpse with the cameras focused on the teams or pundits.   Dance troupes were to the fore and, in one time-out, ingeniously, a group of sweepers came to wipe the floor of marks and rubber with wide-rimmed dry mops, before dropping their equipment and bursting into a routine.  No-one expected that and it was well-received.  The ringside presenters also had some fun, getting two dads to dance for a basketball, a kissing session where a camera zoomed in on a couple in the audience and were exhorted to kiss – some were more forthcoming than others – and generally interviewing openly pro-French or pro-Russian fans – one Russian went absolutely crazy with a flag and his lunatic dancing and waving held the camera and the screen for a good minute and more.

During the third quarter, a couple joined myself and others in the suite (it was never full).  The fast-paced nature of the game made it exciting but the French were just far too strong for the Russians, running out 82-65 winners, to made it to their first ever Olympic women’s basketball final.  The fourth quarter concluded at about 10.40 p.m. but I had paid on my ticket to be there until 11 p.m. and so I took in the French celebrations, both in the team (watching the captain have an interview with French TV among other things) and the crowd, finally leaving at 10.55 p.m. with all bar one of the French team in the dressing room.  The crush outside was immense but I darted in gaps to try and advance my position, needing to get back to London Victoria by midnight.  At one, some started walking along a narrow ledge, after a distance forced to jump down because of two bobbies standing sentry there.  A French fan sang the Marseillaise loudly at them, to which one policeman growled to another “They weren’t doing that in 1940 when the Germans overran them.”

My second experience was on Saturday 11^th at Wembley stadium for the gold medal match between Brazil and Mexico.  I had booked this ticket back in May 2011, for the reasonable (given the occasion) sum of £65.  I went to London Bridge first of all, to take in the rings on Tower Bridge in person and then I got on the tube at Tower Hill and finally exited at Wembley Park to get the full vista of walking down Olympic way.  There was no allowance for stopping at all in the environs around the station, but despite the packed numbers, I had come an hour and twenty minutes beforehand so as not to be caught out again.

As I edged closer to the ground, the Latin American spirit of carnivals became more apparent with the wild outfits, one Brazilian fan in a gold-lame suit with outsize green spectacles and Elvis hair was among many sui generis delights.  The ticketing was far more efficient than at the North Greenwich Arena – while roughly a similar proportion of booths were open (75%), there were twenty booths in total, meaning the 15 open ones never had to contend with a vertiginous queue.  When the friendly box office man asked me for some photo id, I was thrown and concerned I wouldn’t get in, but along with my Visa cards and reciting certain information only I would know (such as ticket reference and when I booked it), I did get my hands on this priceless ticket.

I was high up (it was a Category D seat) but that just allowed me to absorb the vast panorama of the stadium in my first ever visit to it since it was rebuilt.  I nominally supported the Brazilians before a ball had been kicked but I was happy to applaud a football fiesta.  The Brazilians seemed more likely to show flair and ambition, while I had no previous affinity for perennial underachievers Mexico.

I would have to say that there were more Brazilians in the crowd than Mexicans but there a significant British presence too.  The boy of the father sitting next to me went and leaned over the balcony, coming back to say that he had spotted David Beckham.  With the match underway, one happy Mexican near me went into Speedy Gonzalez mode: “Vamos! Vamos! Arriba! Underley!”  The fun was added to by spontaneous Mexican waves (I say ‘spontaneous’ because the pitchside commentators tried to whip up the crowd similarly at half-time) – surely some bias involved here?  The Brazilian contingent were more than happy to indulge in this fond crowd get-together from the World Cup in Mexico in 1986.

The Mexican team wasted little time in letting their counterparts on the pitch that they had no come along just to make up the numbers, scoring within the first minute, Aribe Peralta curling it sweetly beyond the despairing Brazilian goalkeeper’s grasp.  Then they settled down to boss the game.  For half an hour the Brazilians barely had a sniff (reminding me of The Simpsons’ satire of World Cup ’94, with a staid final of Portugal against Mexico – the coincidence with today that the Brazilians are Portuguese-speakers I found to my own personal amusement), forcing the coach into a substitution after 31 minutes (always a bad sign) to bring on Hulk.  The Brazilians had a few half-chances thereafter but the Mexican defensive organisation was superb.  They were also helped by the Brazilian antipathy to crossing the ball into the box – many the time a Brazilian player made it to the byline and then the phobia kicked in and they were closed down by two defenders.  The Brazilian obsession with playing it through the middle was meat and drink to the Mexicans.

The pattern continued in the second half.  Brazil continued to screw balls wide of the net (the Mexican ‘keeper was barely tested in the 90 minutes).  Mexico even had the ball in the net, but though it was disallowed, it proved no wake-up call to the Brazilians.  On the 75th minute, Peralta claimed his second, with a bullet header from a free-kick near the corner flag.  I was delighted for the Mexicans because they truly deserved to win this match.  Peralta was taken off with four minutes of normal time remaining, much to his obvious reluctance given that he still had the chance to score the perfect hat-trick (left foot, right foot and header) yet the coach must have wanted him to receive a fulsome ovation.  Hulk scored in injury-time, provoking a manic two minutes in the search for an equaliser, but it was not to be.

Brazil had the superstars – Neymar had some exquisite tricks, for example – but Mexico had the team and were very impressive.  The medal ceremony involved the vanquishers of Team GB’s men’s football squad, with South Korea (or as the announcer said “Korea, Republic of”) claiming a bronze medal position.  The podium was quite massive to incorporate all three squads.  Despite the result, there a lot of bonhomie at the end, with the Mexican fan I had mentioned earlier, being playful with three Brazilians a couple of rows forward, even holding up a Brazil flag and chanting ‘Brasil’.  The spirit of the Olympics one might say.  I stayed for the Mexico squad’s lap of honour and waited until they had entirely left the pitch.  I knew the crowds outside would be massive whenever I left and I wanted to soak up as much of the experience as possible.