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London 2012 isn't just for young people
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When I went to my first Winter Olympics in Albertville in 1992, I found myself staying in the same hotel as hundreds of volunteers in the ski resort of La Plagne.
We often ate meals together and I got to know quite a few of the volunteers personally during the Games. For the first time I understood what excitement volunteers can have about being part of the Olympics.
I remember vividly dropping one of them off at a railway station at the end of the Games, a young French P.E. teacher called Christine. I carried her bags to the platform and Christine promptly burst into tears.
“Why are you crying?” I asked her. “Because the Olympics are over, ” she replied. “And I’ve enjoyed it so much.”
I was struck by the emotion that many of the French volunteers had in Albertville and, as a result, I’ve have a huge amount of respect for volunteers at the 10 Olympics I’ve been to since.
Without them, the Olympics don’t function. Unlike me, they are not being paid to work at the Games. Yet, they set the tone for the Games because they will help competitors, officials and spectators from around the world.
London 2012 have now launched their volunteer recruitment programme. If you want to be part of it, go to their website.
I was at the launch at the Olympic Park when singer Alesha Dixon posed for photographs to promote the scheme.
I’m not sure London 2012 have got their PR right here. McDonalds are involved in the process and that means their restaurants will be full of information on volunteering and the company will be doing a lot of training.
Like Alesha, that will help 2012 get their message over to a younger audience.
But actually the best volunteers I have come across at Olympics are over over 50 or over 60. In 2000, for example. Sydney used a lot of silver-haired ladies to direct people around the Olympic Park and they were brilliant.
People respect the Saga generation and they are also much better at handling stressed media or spectators because they have more experience in life.
So, 2012, next time you promote volunteering, please roll out a celebrity over 60. How about David Jason, Roger Moore, Helen Mirren, Terry Wogan or Michael Parkinson?
2012 isn’t just for the youth of the world.
Hooked on Henley
Last weekend, I took part in Henley Royal Regatta for the first time. Although Henley isn’t part of the World Cup series, it still attracts top international crews, as well as the best of club rowing in the UK.
The quad that has been racing as Great Britain all summer – Katherine Grainger, Anna Watkins, Beth Rodford and me – put on club kit to represent Marlow, Leander, Gloucester and London.
Here’s my diary from the event.
Grainger, Watkins, Rodford and Vernon compete in rough water at Henley – Photo: PA
Thursday
We had an early row on the course to get our bearings, check our steering, and to generally enjoy the atmosphere. I had a good look around the course to make sure exactly where the markers are.
At Henley, the row to the start can also be tricky with punts and drunken people in boats charging up and down, so sitting at bow I’ve put eyes in the back of my head to watch out for all hazards. If we do crash, I will personally take the impact so I’m very keen for that not to happen!
Returned to our national training centre down the road at Caversham for our second session, where it seems pretty quiet after all the excitement of Henley.
The crews not racing are training as normal throughout the regatta so racing is definitely a bonus as it gives you a bit of a rest – we’d all rather race than endure our normal training load of three tough sessions every day.
I find it frustrating that there isn’t a full complement of events for women – there are three for women, compared with 16 for men.
The event is run by the Henley Stewards and they are entitled to do what they want; and I am fully aware that for various reasons, including that most women quit rowing in their 30s, the standard of women’s domestic rowing doesn’t have the same depth as the men’s scene.
However, to restrict women to three open events – which means everyone from club rowers to internationals – seems a pity. Let’s have a junior event for a start. Henley is such a fantastic showpiece for British rowing it seems a shame to not have a full women’s representation.
Friday
Kick-off! And can I say that I am now officially hooked on Henley. With all the fuss about blazers, Pimm’s, skirts below the knee and so on, you forget what the essence of Henley Royal Regatta is: absolutely top-class international and club racing on home water, which is, (as I’ve mentioned before in this blog) the ultimate buzz for any athlete.
I’d also not appreciated just how close the racing lane is to the bank here. You can virtually hear the pop of champagne corks and the chink of glasses; and as you race down the course you almost feel the spectators are right on top of the boats as the boozy cheers from the towpath give way to more restrained applause in the Stewards’ Enclosure. This is brilliant!
Most of my mates were doing the social bit today, so after we’d raced I put on my dress and headed out to see them all. Henley’s a great place to catch up with people; you can really take the tradition or leave it.
You can opt for the formal blazers, expensive champagne and oysters in Stewards’, or go for barbecues in the field and picnics down the riverbank. Whichever way you go, there’s such a positive atmosphere in the whole regatta and there’s so many friends to bump into.
Saturday
Woke up with a pretty stiff neck this morning – it must have been a consequence of spending most of my rows looking over my shoulder every few strokes.
Having beaten a Belfast crew yesterday, our opposition today is a Canadian quad which is actually a composite of their lightweight and heavyweight doubles.
We thought we’d have a crack at the record to the barrier – about 640 metres down the course – which had been set in 2001, and broke it by a second, which in crosswind conditions was something we were pretty pleased with. Another good row which was a step on from yesterday.
Swung by the press box to do some tweeting for the Rowing Voice, an online magazine for rowers, with Rachel Quarrell and Zoe de Toledo, who are the editors.
The press box is just past the finish line and is in fact set slightly on the course so you get a fantastic view of the boats coming down towards you.
Quick interview for BBC Radio Berkshire, where I was asked about the unique nature of Henley, with Olympians alongside schoolboys and club rowers, but no sense of being stopped for autographs.
My reply was that one of the best things about rowing is that it is very egalitarian: it is such a tough and demanding sport that there’s a huge mutual respect between competitors and between rowers at all levels.
I object quite strongly to all these open-top bus parades that seem mandatory now. As one of my friends often points out, “You’re not saving the world, you’re doing PE.”
There are so many people who are contributing to society far more than we are, yet we are held up as heroes. Let’s keep perspective over what we do: it’s not life or death, it’s sport. It’s incredibly exciting, passionate, and can dish out tremendous highs as well as crushing lows, but it’s still just sport.
Later that evening I cycled back down to the boat tent to get our race times for the following day. Saturday evening is a pretty drunken affair so I had to weave my bike through the crowds of sunburnt Pimm’s-soaked punters. We were scheduled for a mid afternoon final.
Sunday
Finals day. After an early row on the course, we returned to my house in Henley to chill out for a few hours before our race. The problem with racing so late is that you miss all the other finals, so we kept up to date with what was happening with Regatta Radio, which broadcasts throughout Henley week.
The wind was building throughout the day and by the time we hit the water, was probably as strong a headwind as any in which I’ve competed. It made for a pretty brutal race but we were pleased to beat the Kiwi national quad for the win.
After that it was a quick change, prizegiving, and in true Henley fashion, we finished the regatta by swigging champagne from the trophy.
Henley is very very different to any other kind of international racing – there is a reason the last true international race held here was the 1948 Olympic regatta! However, a win is a win, whatever the circumstances, and we’re glad to have this boost as we move into the third and final World Cup event in Lucerne.
Watch Sunday’s finals of the Lucerne World Cup live on the red button and online (UK only) 0920-1040 and 1200-1355 BST, with selected highlights online afterwards. Annabel’s quad races at 1231. Full highlights on Monday on BBC Two, 1400-1500 BST, and for seven days afterwards on iPlayer.
An Olympic medal to the people who made 'Dive'
Sport and drama have never struck me as the most obvious bedfellows. For every success like “Chariots of Fire” there are multiple failures with dippy storylines and implausible action sequences – and most of the time live sport is drama enough in itself. The fictionalised version is second best.
There’s also curiously little drama where sport is a key part of the story, despite its importance to so many people’s lives, and I suspect that’s partly because too much of the sport and arts worlds don’t understand each other. There are exceptions, but one of the challenges around 2012 as a year is that mixing culture and sport can be an oil-and-water job.
So an Olympic medal to the people who made “Dive”, which is showing on BBC Two this Thursday and Friday and then available on the iPlayer. You can read more about it here – but it’s a simple story.
A teenage girl called Lindsey is training with the hope of being part of the GB diving team for London 2012. But she gets pregnant, and the film is about the way she and her boyfriend try to sort out their lives.
I’ve just been watching a preview, and it’s terrific: powerfully acted and great to look at, as you’d expect from someone with the track record of Dominic Savage.
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Aisling Loftus stars as Lindsey in Dive
It is, of course, about far more than sport. Apart from the big themes around sex and pregnancy and coping with that when you’re young, there’s a vivid sense of what it’s like growing up in a small town with the pull of an outside world – though Lindsey’s boyfriend isn’t exactly encouraging when he finds out she’s aiming for the London Games. I’ll delete the expletives, but he tells her that must be why she’s so miserable and asks of the Olympics “how s*** is that?” (Warning: your granny may not like the grittier sequences.)
And yet there’s a definite sense here of how sport makes a difference, and I was interested to read the director’s take:
“Early mornings and the individuality of diving, it’s the most obvious and perfect individual sport. The time it takes, and dedication to get one dive right and yet the margin of error is so slight. It’s also the idea that the dive is like life, taking a leap of faith. The courage involved. Showing the difference between those that will take a chance in life, and those that won’t. The perfect dive, is like getting life perfect; really hard, almost impossible. It can also resemble falling. That’s easier to do!”
Which is all true, and from where I sit watching the preparations for 2012 it genuinely adds to the way we think about our competitors with their multiplicity of backgrounds and hundreds of different stories. This is, if you like, a fictional counterpart to the Olympic Dreams series that’s following the real life stories – and it’s surprisingly easy to imagine Lindsey in either programme.
Now, I should add a couple of notes. First that I’m not an expert in diving – so I’ll leave it to those who are to judge the authenticity of what they see in “Dive” around training and technique. And second – this is not a brazen bit of promoting the wares of the London 2012 project team. We work mainly on the core sport, news and culture initiatives for 2012 – and two years out these films are business-as-usual commissions for BBC Two and BBC Drama with production by ITV Studios.
But what they do show is the way that London 2012 can be a theme for drama and the arts in general – in a way that doesn’t force the audience into categories of “sports lover” or “sport-avoiding drama fan”. This is simply a human story which reflects the biggest event this country will stage, and it gives hope that sport and drama might produce some attractive offspring after all.
Dive starts on Thursday 8 July at 2100 BST, concludes the following day at the same time and is available afterwards on iPlayer.
Would you want to live on the Olympic Park?
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I got the first glimpse of what daily life will be like for the 10,000 competitors at the 2012 Olympics the other day. Well, where athletes will sleep and relax at least.
2012 have set up a show apartment in the athletes village and I joined the International Olympic Committee on a tour.
It didn’t take long. An estate agent would call the three-bedroom flats “cosy”. I’d call them compact.
Three bedrooms for six athletes, two small bathrooms and a small living room. Probably okay for a few weeks for six female Australian gymnasts but space will be tight for a handful of Bulgarian shot-putters.
But what really matters is that the village is at the heart of the Olympic Park which is rare for the Games. That means many competitors will be just a couple of minute’s ride away from the venues, rather than a coach trip across the city.
During the bid, 2012 published sketches of athletes standing at their bedroom windows with a view of the main stadium. Some of the flats will have that but the reality is that most will look over the new Westfield shopping centre and its car park, hardly the most inspiring of views.
When the Games are over, these flats will be turned into 2,800 homes for Londoners, nearly half of them “affordable” homes.
Would l live there? Well, they should be plenty of green space in the Park when the Games are over so the views will be better. I also think these appartment blocks will be perfect for people heading into retirement.
You’ve got a major shopping centre over the road, a swimming pool nearby and a huge park to walk in every day. When you are heading towards 70 or 80 and maybe worry about driving a car, you’d have everything on your doorstep and still be within a short distance of central London by public transport.
These flats won’t be on the market unil late 2011 and people will not be able to move in until 2014 when the Park and the blocks have been redesigned.
The Olympic Park Legacy Company has a huge challenge in making the whole environment an attractive place to live after the Games.
Please take a look at my report and tell me what you think.
Thumbs-up for Diamond League as it heads to UK
This weekend, Gateshead has the honour of holding the first meeting of the new Diamond League series to take place in the UK.
With 14 meetings over the summer months in three continents, the Diamond League replaced the Golden League this season, with the aim of bringing the best of the best together to wow fans.
At the concept launch last November in Monaco, IAAF President Lamine Diack promised “world-class sport and entertainment” with a determination too see greater frequency of competition between the big names.
So has the new Diamond League lived up to its grand billing so far?
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Veronica Campbell-Brown wins the 100m in Eugene
Will the Aviva British Grand Prix in Gateshead be any different from previous years, before it was part of a series, or is it the same meeting with a new name?
After enjoying it so much last year, I worked again last weekend at the Nike Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, the sixth stop on the Diamond League tour.
Considering how inconvenient it is to get to Eugene on the north-west coast of the United States, it is testament to the meeting that is always attracts big names and – for the 15th year in row – a sell-out crowd of 12,000, but this year was deemed the best ever.
Chatting to the athletes over the weekend I had to ask them whether the Diamond League was any different. The general vibe was positive and that yes, it was different this year.
For a start, there are more head-to-head match-ups, something that all the athletes I spoke to were relishing. It isn’t just about accumulating those Diamond League points to win the cash prizes and Diamond Trophy at the end of the season.
It is about the psychological advantages, the stamping of authority over your main rivals more often, as well as giving fans the races they all want to see more often.
There are 32 events in which you can score points, with each taking place at seven of the 14 meetings. The only event that has all 32 is the only two-day meeting, at London’s Crystal Palace on 13 and 14 August.
Clearly the word “diamond” in the title is making a difference to some athletes. The Prefontaine meeting director’s face was a picture when he heard that one of the African athletes had flown into Portland and got a taxi to Eugene – a 110-mile trip taking two hours!
I feel this 14-meet concept is working well this year as there are no global championships for many, so athletes who want to get performances on the board and cash in their pockets will have to take part.
It will be interesting to see if the starting line-ups are so loaded next year as the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea approach.
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Walter Dix beats Tyson Gay in the 200m in Eugene
Olympic 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser was generally very excited about meeting her main rivals regularly in the sprints, but world champion Christian Cantwell reminded me that – unlike the sprinters – shot-putters never avoided each other in the past, so it wasn’t much different for them!
There was just a special vibe around Eugene, as I feel there will be in Gateshead, about being a Diamond League meeting. It’s like a stamp of approval for meetings now, making them one of the chosen few.
But is it any different for the fans? For those who have watched the series so far on the BBC has there be a difference to you as a viewer?
Of course there are things the IAAF would like to make better and iron out. There were questions last weekend as to why the New York and Eugene meets were three weeks apart, making it difficult for athletes from around the world to stay on and do both in one trip.
Also, does the Diamond League threaten the future of other athletics meetings? Is there a fear that these may suffer if the big names are just doing the larger events?
Usain Bolt ran a 300m in Ostrava this season; will he and other big names continue to take part in anything other than the Diamond League meets? These other meetings are vital and need support.
Some meetings are no doubt better for the athletes, media and spectators than others. But overall it seems, six meetings into the first Diamond League season, it’s a thumbs-up from the athletes.
That is why, for me, when Gateshead flies the flag on Saturday to herald the arrival of the Diamond League in the UK, it will be a bit more special. And remember we are the only country that has two of them.