Andrew's Thoughts and Experiences: London 2012

Well that was brilliant, wasn’t it? Every minute of it. I just wish it could have gone on for longer.

As I get older, I realise the fragility of time more and more (and I know I’m not that old!). I look forward to things on the horizon. But before I know it, they’re over. And then a week, month and year passes and I can barely remember the thing it was that I was so looking forward to or the feelings it evoked in me at the time. As time passes it gets more difficult to capture and return to the moment.

I fear this will be the case for the Olympics, but on a national scale. Without doubt this has been the best British summer of my lifetime. The sporting achievements in the Olympics and beyond have eclipsed anything I have ever seen.

A good barometer is ‘Sports Personality of the Year’. In any other year Andy Murray, Laura Trott, Andrew Strauss, Victoria Pendleton, Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis, David Weir, Sir Chris Hoy, Rory McIlroy, Bradley Wiggins and Ronnie O’Sullivan would have all been standout winners. This year, they’ll be lucky to get an invite, let alone be featured in the programme.

Many a better writer than me has already waxed lyrical about the summer of “sporting sensation”, so I won’t try and repeat that here. I do however want to give my grandkids a short memoir of some of the things that I will remember – maybe just as a guide for a “When I was younger…” tale while they sit on my knee crunching on a Worther’s Original.

1) Our superiority in the cycling

The Olympics started for me, like for most people, with the integrally British opening ceremony. Like millions of others I sat in my front room with one eye on the telly and the other eye on Twitter as sarcastic pre Olympic comments about Games Lanes and security turned into an outpouring of national pride. It was brilliant.

But for me it was only the warm-up act, as my heart was soon set racing by the sporting endeavours of Team GB. And out of all of these endeavours, it was the cycling team that I found the most inspiring (To note - inspiring is a word I rarely use).

On the first Saturday of the Games, I set off on my bike to Fulham High Street and waited for what I thought would be the British team leading Mark Cavendish home for Team GB’s first gold in the Road Race. However, not wanting to miss a moment, I had a pocket radio to listen to the commentary as they got closer.

Unfortunately this meant by the time the peleton was a couple of miles away, I already knew that the race had been lost. But it was still an amazing moment to see the British cyclists, including King Bradley, racing as hard as they could at the front of the chasing peleton to try and make up an impossible deficit on Mark Cavendish’s behalf.

It was a shame that Cavendish missed out on a medal again. But the team effort involved was nothing short of remarkable and not really something I had really ever considered before. Five cyclists rode 200 miles just to put one of their team mates in a position from which he could win an individual medal 500 metres from the finishing line. That dedication to a team mate is what I found inspiring.

The same spirit carried on into the Velodrome – the most electric of all of the Olympic venues in my opinion. The team pursuit is now one of my favourite sports to watch, especially when Team GB smash a world record every time they take to the track.

2) My super Saturday

Super Saturday will probably go down as the biggest day of the Olympics. But mine was quite different to most as I was actually busy when most of the winners took gold.

In the morning, I was running in preparation for the New York marathon as Team GB rowed to three gold medals. Then when Ennis, Farah and Rutherford roared to victory in the Olympic stadium, I was busy watching the Team GB football team narrowly lose in a penalty shoot-out to South Korea with my 83-year-old Grandad.

But that didn’t mean I missed out on the action. Once again my pocket radio came to the rescue. In the morning, I was with the rowers every step of the way and they were with me – I’ve never found a run easier. Then later, I sat in the Millennium Stadium watching a below par GB performance while listening to events unfold at the Olympic Park. When Team GB was going 1-0 down to the South Koreans I was cheering for Farah crossing the finishing line.

Super Saturday was capped off the morning after with Andy Murray and Ben Ainsle, two of my favourite Olympians, winning gold. The roll that the British team was on was summed up by Ben Ainsle’s interview a couple of days before the final races of his sailing class. I mean, how often does somebody get away with saying something like: “He’s made me angry. And he didn’t want to make me angry”? If I did that, the person that made me angry would romp to victory. But not Ainsle. He backed it up by kicking “the Dane’s” arse.

3) The spirit of the Olympic Park

I was lucky enough to go to the Olympic Park and get ‘taken up the orbit’ (less painful than it sounds) before the Games. And it was incredible, much more than just a stadium in the middle of Stratford as I had imagined. The venues were amazing, especially the Aquatics Centre, Velodrome and stadium and you could see how much thought had been put into making it an Olympic park rather than just a venue to watch sport.

And when the Games started it really came to life. I went to the Olympic Park three times during the Paralympics – to the opening and closing ceremonies and to a day of athletics.

Each time it was a great day out. For the athletics, I was there from about 9am-6pm. The sport finished at midday, but I spent the rest of the day walking around the park in the sunshine, having lunch at the world’s biggest McDonalds and laying on the large grass areas listening to the live music.

The spirit on the park was extremely memorable also - so different to a football match. People were evidently happy and excited to be there and it had a real family feel. Equally high spirited were the now famous Games Makers, sitting on their high chairs chatting to the crowd through their megaphones or signing a song and giving people a high five with their giant foam hands. It was just a great atmosphere to be a part of.

4) The borderline offensive office decoration

Olympic fever took over everything – even the office. Luckily I work in a place that takes an open-mind to these sorts of events. The sport was played on our TVs dotted around the office and every time Team GB won a medal, a bell was rung and a trolley full of drinks wheeled out in to the middle of everyone’s desks.

We also had a sweepstake with each pod of desks drawing a nation out of a hat. This gave people the license to decorate the office in their adopted nation’s colours in a manner that can only be described as grotesque and often crossing the line of political correctness. As China, we soon had pictures of Chairman Mao dotted around, Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling and a nearby pillar claimed as Tibet. My favourite decoration though was the 5 hula-hoops that one pod of desks taped to the ceiling in the form of the Olympic rings.

To round off the Olympics, the top performing desks competed in a final Olympic competition with a school sports day theme. Unfortunately, my team didn’t triumph in the egg and spoon, sack, and beanbag on the head relay.

5) The intimacy of the victory parade

The final and perhaps most memorable moment from the Games though was the winners’ parade.

With a day off I decided to get down to Trafalgar Square early and positioned myself at the front of the crowds on the Strand. Remarkably I found myself standing next to a 61-year-old from the same town as me who had attended the same school – small world.

After about two hours of waiting, the parade of 21 trucks holding the most famous faces of the past two months reached us. It was amazing how close and accessible they were – close enough to shake their hands.

In hindsight, I think this just emphasised the remarkable intimacy of the Olympics even though it was organised on such a massive scale. I love football, but it’s stars are never that accessible. However, the unique thing about people like Tom Daley, Jessica Ennis and Sir Chris Hoy is that they have a boy/girl next door grounding to them that makes the public feel like they can relate to them and almost know them personally. This, I think, is why there was such an outpouring of warmth as they went past that day. And most pleasing of all, is that it felt like it was a warmth that was reciprocated by the athletes towards the crowd.