Olympic Park

Our tickets were for 19:00 but we decided to go early to walk around the Olympic Park and take photos and visit the different venues. The National Stadium (Bird’s Nest) and the Water Cube are next to each other separated by about 600 mts. The whole security process to enter the park was fast and done in clean and spacious tent facilities with evaporation fans cooling the area. I never felt crowded or pushed. Attendants greeted you and guided you through the process, greeting you with a smile and wishing you a good visit and apologized for any inconveniences or delays (of which there were none). The stadiums and surrounding park was awesome! We walked around taking pictures and enjoying just being there. We decided to head to our seats early. Nothing prepares you for the sight of entering the stadium: huge, colorful, clean and spacious! Both the setting and the occasion made it a very special moment. We were to be there until the last event of the day that ended around midnight.
Watching track and field is like watching several TV channels all at once. Several events are taking place at different parts of the field all at once. In our time there we were to watch the qualifying events for the women’s 3000 mts steeplechase, women’s shot-put, women’s 200 mts, men’s 100 mts, women’s discus, women’s triple jump, women’s 100 mts, women’s 1500 mts, men’s 400 mts hurdles and also the final events for the men’s shot-put and the women’s 10.000 mts race which was the last event of the evening and also turned out to be the most exciting. The crowd on the very full venue responded to the occasion cheering and making waves throughout the night. At one point the full realization of where I was hit me. I was taken back to the times when, as a child, my father took me to the track and field events held every few years by the oil companies. He was a field judge on several events, mostly races. I wished he was still alive to hear about my trip. I realized how fortunate I was to be here and how thankful one must be for all the chain of events that took me there and to our hosts. It was a very emotional, if private, moment for me among the huge crowd.
The final women’s race was a very close one. The two leaders from the start were from Turkey and Ethiopia. There seemed to be three races in one as the field separated into three different groups holding their pace. It was 25 times around the track, and as time progressed the separation between the groups increased. The two leaders were running a race of their own, trading places back and forth along the way. The US top contender was in the third group. Each lap, instead of getting slower was actually getting faster. With some five or six laps left, the pace increased even more and the American runner started an incredible rally that led her to a photo finish for the Bronze. The Gold was won by a last effort of the current world champion from Ethiopia, Dibaba that broke her own world record. Turkey got a well-earned Silver. The men’s shot-put even though it was a lot less exciting to watch, was also a close competition won by Poland over the Olympic record holder from the USA.
The stadium was vacated orderly and quickly. Again, I never felt crowded. As we exited the stadium the night lights and the excitement of being part of the event provided plenty of emotion. A few pictures and on to find JinJin and our bus, then head back to the hotel. It had been a very long day and after a hot shower I was comfortable in bed when I realized that we never had dinner and the pop corn and Coke at the stadium was the only thing that I had had. Again, I had no time to blog or write today.