Hats wigs and facepaint

The fact that Germany beat Netherlands 2-1 in the Men's Olympic Hockey final yesterday has completely defeated my theory that the result was predetermined by the proportion of spectators turning out in national colours. Take the preliminary match I watched last week when Netherlands beat New Zealand. The stands were a sea of orange. Synthetic orange wigs and brightly coloured jackets were everywhere.

Supporters from the first match were still shouting Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie but black was nowhere to be seen other than on the pitch. The result? 5-1 to Netherlands. I was hopeful then when I saw plenty of red white and blue wigs as well as masses of facepaint in the union flag colours amongst the bronze medal match spectators yesterday. Sadly a result for TeamGB was not to be. Australia were the better team on the day winning 3-1. The green and gold hats, though definitely in the minority, were jubilant!

Netherlands 5 New Zealand 1

When I applied for tickets to the Olympics over a year ago it never occurred to me what an early start would be needed to get to the stadium by 8:30am. However the one pair of tickets I managed to get out of the ballot was to see the morning session of Hockey in the Olympic park itself and I wasn't about to turn down the opportunity. The feared security queues didn't materialize but it still took over 2 hours door to door from Surrey having left home a little before 6am. 

Bakker scores to make it 3:1

 By lunchtime we'd sat through 3 seasons of English weather, getting frozen, sunburnt and finally drenched, but we'd seen some superb hockey: Australia versus Argentina and New Zealand versus Netherlands.

40 seconds from Gold

I watched the men's Olympic road race today and briefly glimpsed team GB as they raced through Oxshott, still leading the peloton.

They were still around 50 seconds behind the leaders at that point and the riders were all going so fast that it seemed an impossible dream that they could catch up in the remaining distance. The eventual 40 seconds between  Mark Cavendish and  the winner,  Kazakhstan's Alexander Vinokourov, sounds like nothing until you've stood on the street and experienced just how far they ride in that short space of time. I'm truly in awe!