Skip to main content

London buses, legacy and a legion of highly impressed soldiers

By
Ksenia Afanasyeva, watched by Maria Paseka

I had a bit of a moment yesterday.  Sat on the shuttle bus on my way to the North Greenwich Arena, I looked around me, and everything was so pink and shiney and clean and sweet scented, the volunteers all so helpful and smiley.  The sun was even shining.  I was really moved by that bus, and began to weep quietly in my corner, hoping my fellow travellers wouldn't notice.

Perhaps LOCOG had arranged it that way in order to enhance the emotional experience of event goers.  The experience of buying my tickets at the last minute and the relief I felt at being able to attend the world's leading sporting event in my home town was certainly beyond overwhelming.  I probably wouldn't have had that feeling if I had been able to book in advance successfully on any one of the dozen previous occasions I had tried, and been told that tickets were sold out.  Never mind.  Who cares.  A lifelong ambition to attend the gymnastics competition at the Olympic Games has been realised.  It really didn't disappoint at all.  It exceeded my expectations. I now really believe in the Olympics as a power for the good, thanks to that bus, and I hope that all the buses in London are like that forever more.   Isn't that what legacy means?

I wonder what the legion of soldiers who were drafted in to fill the seats on one side of the arena thought of the opportunity of watching teenage girls in tight leotards cavort around the apparatus in daredevil manner?  I do hope they were seriously impressed.  If not, I can think of a legion of gym fans around the world who would willingly have given their eye teeth to be in that arena.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown30 July 2012 at 11:48

    It's funny! The soldiers had no right to be unhappy with them so lucky : )

    ReplyDelete
  2. M30 July 2012 at 20:52

    I am glad you enjoyed the feeling. Are you going to the Women's finals as well?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fact or fiction? The press, gymnastics and pregnancy doping

By
It was a Sunday morning.  I was drinking my coffee and contemplating the day ahead - a workout at the gym, shopping for groceries, an evening reading a book, or catching up on last night's episodes of crime thriller The Bridge .  How nice it was not to have to think about work for a day. Then I saw it - a story about the history of doping in The Observer .  Interesting reading. Of course, cheating is as old as the hills.  It is, unfortunately, human nature for some people to try to gain easy advantage in any kind of competition.  That is why we have laws, rules, ethical guidelines.  People who cheat should face justice and shouldn't complain when they are found out. But the story about pregnancy doping bothered me.  Hadn't that been found to be fictional?  The author began with Olga Kovalenko's allegations made in 1994 - but the rumours had started way back in 1991 with the documentary series More Than A Game .  The practice...
3 comments
Read more

‘My daughter likes gymnastics. For us, this is the big success’. Aliya Mustafina talks to Match TV

By
Via VK.com.  Google translate A big interview with Aliya Mustafina was published on MATCH!. We provide a small excerpt below, and the full version is available on the website at the link below  ❓ Aliya, you are now the head coach of the junior artistic gymnastics team. What does your typical day look like? 💜 My current life is similar to what it was when I was competing. In the morning, I have breakfast and go to work by 9:00, we train for four hours, have lunch, rest and train for another three hours. During the training camp, the athletes live at the base. They live and train on the same territory. ❓ Do you manage the gymnasts' personal trainers or do you evenly distribute the responsibilities? 💜 We work in contact with the personal trainers, I listen to their opinions. For example, if the trainer believes that their athlete needs to be given a little rest or do fewer repetitions of a particular exercise, we do so. ❓ Describe the current generation of children. Do they nee...
2 comments
Read more

Aliya Mustafina - 'I'm just trying to stay healthy'

By
A brief interview with the World and Olympic Champion from All Sport is summarised below. Russian national gymnastics continues to prepare for the World Championships, which will be held October 3-12 in Nanning (China). Olympic champion Aliya Mustafina told Mary Staroverova about her health and about preparations for the competition. - In June, I went to Germany to solve the problem with my ankle.  I had a small operation to clean the joints of a build-up of bone particles.  Nothing serious was evident, and the operation went well.  Now I have to tumble.  But there is still some discomfort, a slight pain at full load, and I can not tumble at full force.  For the time being, I try to go easy on my legs.  After the Russia Cup I will have to fully prepare for Worlds. That is just one month.   Even if I'm not tumbling, I will keep myself in good shape, and that should suffice (smiles). - I can't say if it is a different pain to before Europeans, because at...
48 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more