Tuesday, 12 August 2008

My Olympics experience/gallery

Going to a Olympics event has whetted my appetite for taking up sports, and for sure I'll train a lot more on my rowing.

It was wet, but the venue was fantastic, and a great experience overall. I only wish I brought a pair of binoculars.

Getting a feel for the pre-competition atmosphere. This was taken a day before the opening ceremony.

As could be seen, security was tight...



Off to Shunyi Olympic park tomorrow!

Scene opposite the coach park, where I was waiting with friends to go to Shunyi.


Reports of missile batteries are justified it seems.

Just outside the front entrance, I saw this in one of the nearby bins. Well, I thought it was funny.

And here I am.


We sat next to this cheerleading group, which attracted as much, if not more attention than the rowers.


The action begins...



Cheering for the Chinese fours. 中国加油!


We sat about 300m from the finishing line.

The yellow thing I was sitting on was a rain-cloak handed out by volunteers, which proved to be very useful later on in the day.

The Chinese eights, whose warming-up run was wasted due to the rain.

Waiting for the announcement of the eights' heats, which were postponed in the end. Still, we managed to watch most of the races, so I was pretty satisfied.

Show's over guys, let's go home.


Queuing for the bus.

Sun 10th Aug: Rain, so no prospect of blue skies today either. At least the air smelled fresh.

Mon 11th Aug: Pretty good, I could see clouds' linings and everything. The sun made brief appearances too.

Tues 12th Aug: Brilliant day, probably the best I've had since coming back this summer. If only Beijing could remain like this for the rest of the month...