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

More thoughts on US gymnastics, Karolyi - and Zaglada

By
I’d like to add some thoughts to my earlier post about USA gymnastics and Bela Karolyi:  1. What Bela did, he did. He would agree that his actions were his responsibility. 2. Abusive relationships in USA gymnastics (and no doubt elsewhere) pre-existed Bela’s move to the USA and still exist today. 3. Harsh training existed and exists in all of the ‘artistic’ sports and dance-related forms - eg ballroom dancing, ballet, ice skating, circus.  The training involved in most of these activities is founded on an assumption of the benefits of early specialisation.  It revolves around  ‘ideal’ forms, shapes and postures that are difficult to achieve without early years training - women especially.   4. Wherever prodigious early talent exists, there are predators whose main desire in life is to take advantage of that talent - music, entertainment, maths, sport.  The boundaries very easily become confused.  Who owns the talent?  Who decides how many hours to work, at what level?  FOR WHOSE BENEFI
Post a Comment
Read more

RIP Bela Karolyi

By
RIP Bela Karolyi. We were all mesmerised by the gymnastics that Nadia Comaneci brought to the world.    Some of us wanted to be like Nadia.    Others wanted to share her glory. When Kerri Strug saluted the judges with a hop and a cry of agony, thousands of adults cried for joy, felt inordinate pride that a love of country had inspired such courage and strength.   When generations of elite gymnasts, many of them gold medal winners, spoke out about the abuse they had experienced whilst practicing their sport, those thousands and millions of cheering adults didn’t stop appreciating the gold medals. They did start to look for someone to blame, someone who could take responsibility for the entire systemic nastiness that enabled the abuse to take place.    Some chose the man who came to fame as Nadia Comaneci’s coach, and went on to shape elite gymnastics training in the USA, Bela Karolyi. But who facilitated and enabled Karolyi?    Who endorsed the training that earned the medals?   It was
Post a Comment
Read more

Vladimir Zaglada - coach, author, friend, father

By
It is with great sadness that I report here the sudden and completely unexpected death, on 5th October, of our friend Vladimir Zaglada.  I send my love and condolences to his daughter, Olesya.  My thoughts are with the whole family.   Vladimir was born in Lvov, Ukraine, in November 1944.  His father was a progressive lawyer of great courage who was known to defend those who challenged the Soviet authorities.  Vladimir trained as a sports acrobat under the developing Soviet sports system, working in the same club as Olympic champion Viktor Chukarin.  After moving to Moscow, he became a leading coach of women's gymnastics, supporting the development of high level acrobatics.  He worked particularly closely with the up and coming young gymnasts of the early 1980s - you can see him at work in the video 'You in Gymnastics'.  At the national training centre, Lake Krugloye, he worked with Filatova, Mostepanova, Yurchenko, Arzhannikova, Mukhina and more.   Around the mid 1980s Vlad
Post a Comment
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more