I am having some Internet problems, which is why I haven’t posted for a couple of days. Apologies. I have seen boxing, volley ball, table tennis, weightlifting more athletics and a beach volley ball final since my last post. I giggled my way through the table tennis watching the ridiculous quality of shots. I invested a lot of my teenage years down the youth club playing table tennis and thought I had a decent top spin smash, but this was just mad. Fantastic.
Then volley ball; Cuba v Serbia and Brazil v Japan. I can’t think of anything better than this. I particularly enjoyed the post match interviews.
Weightlifting, (105kg big boys), Steiner for Germany won. What a story for him. He competed for Austria in Athens and then fell out with their federation. He then married a German and started to compete for them. His wife was killed in a car crash in 2007 and he won gold here yesterday for her. On the podium he held a photo of his wife and the whole team was in tears.
It was chucking it down at the beach volleyball final so I had to resort to photography (at least that’s what I am telling Florence.) I have mixed feelings about it. It was a bit like a Radio 1 road show from the 80’s on a beach in Blackpool where the crowd is made to have fun. Make some noise for yooooooo esssssssss ayyyyyyyyy.
Outside the games I’ve had an unpleasant encounter in a toilet with a nutter (something I can only share with my closest friends), and I have seen an Iranian message of goodwill immediately stamped out by security services outside the workers stadium before the weightlifting. I have discovered Wangfujing Dajie, which is Oxford Street on EPO. I read in the newspaper that 60% of all Chinese will be urban dwellers by 2030. That is 900,000,000 people living in cities. The 4th ring road around Beijing is about as far out of London as the M25 and there is nothing but high-rise buildings in between. So not only does the population stretch out it reaches up. It is really impossible to give an impression of just how huge and densely populated Beijing is. Rush hour on the Tokyo underground is an experience but the subway here is unbelievable.
I hit an Olympic wall yesterday. I have been to two events a day for the last week, and I suddenly felt a claustrophobic need to escape. No more ‘one world one dream’ songs on every tube station, I couldn’t face another struggle to find my way round the impenetrable public bus system to each venue. To get to the beach volley ball this morning a volunteer walked with me to all four exits Dongzhimen station to find the K32 Olympic bus to the venue. After 30 mins she admitted she could not help and I jumped in a cab. In all it took me 2 hours to get across the city. I just needed a break from it all, but in Beijing there is no escape. I am constantly working out what is taking place at which venue at any moment in time. For instance the BMX final was postponed due to the rain today so I could try and scalp a ticket tomorrow. I am digging deep to complete my own Olympic marathon. I am off out again now to see some athletics. I love sport.
