We're in, we've located our seats, Styrofoam cups in hand - we're ready!
Can I just say at this point, a plastic stadium chair would not have been my first choice of what to sit on having just been thoroughly rained on for two hours. The water slowly seeping out of your clothes - or bones in this case - tends to pool somewhere beneath your thighs, which is not conducive to successfully pretending you're perfectly comfortable and not really in danger of catching pneumonia. Perhaps this is the real reason stadium chairs flick shut every time you stand up. The regular medal ceremonies throughout the night meant when standing for the national anthem you could dispose of your gathering rain water every half hour or so, much like the workers down on the track bailing out the trays of water collected from their giant squeegees as they pushed them up and down the lanes. Is it just me or are these not the most brilliant inventions yet? The giant, roll-able, pushable squeegee, star of Glasgow 2014: for those who haven't seen them, they look for all the world like the love child of a lawnmower, a painting roller and a supermarket trolley, and they work astoundingly well! Sort of like a liquid clearing equivalent of a Dyson. Unfortunately, my attempts to find them on eBay have been unsuccessful so far.
Anyway, we had arrived early enough to get a real feel for the building atmosphere and, as the huge digital clock creapt closer to seven o'clock the crowds were building, the commentators were putting their all into hyping everyone up, and the staff on the track and field were working ten to the dozen in an attempt to reverse the weather. The majority of people watching the athletics this summer will have done so from home on their TV, computer or phone and probably guessed the atmosphere doesn't really translate across the camera terribly well. Before this weekend I had figured the noise in the Stadium would likely be ten fold what it sounds like on TV, the athletes would suddenly seem real in person, and there would be no skipping to the good bits - you would be with the athletes through every little defeat and accomplishment, you would be part of it. All this was, of course, true but there was so much more. Amongst the thousands of spectators you notice how many nations have turned out to support their teams, and suddenly you understand the idea of these Games knitting communities and cultures together. You also hear these wonderful snippets of conversations around you - everything from checking the washing machine wasn't left on to hoping a family member does well in the 5000m, which for some reason makes you realise these Games aren't some distant, fictional land. They're here, now and include you and me. And oh wow, the smell of the Stadium! It's this glorious mix of fresh air from the arena in front and pies and chips from the food stands behind which you can never truly appreciate from your living room.
You also don't have the challenge of trying to ensure you have at least one eye on the four events all going on at the same time...I took Biology and I can tell you it's not actually possible. The crowd suddenly start clapping in a rhythm and your eyes dash around looking for which athlete is about to set off on their medal bid. By the time you've located him on the triple jump track the crowd are now cheering madly and he's only half way to the sand pit so obviously you've missed something crucial elsewhere - how far did that javelin get? Or is the pole vault bar still up? And what a conundrum when silence is required for the start of the Women's 4x 400m Relay but Scotland's pole vault hopeful is about to make her last jump. There's no way you're going to hush 10,000 excited Scots until she's finished, however many 'haud yer wheesht's' signs are put up on the big screens.
By the end of the night, having watched the unmistakable shape of Bolt finishing the 100m Relay in his usual style on the other side of the arena, all our hands were raw from clapping ourselves silly, legs humid and sticky from being wrapped in that huge plastic poncho all night, and voices slightly hoarse from belting out a fantastic rendition of '500 Miles' - it's a cracking song but something about it being sung by 20,000 excited spectators at once gives it the edge.
Making our way out the Stadium, we headed down to the shuttle bus, guided all the while by the volunteers still working away with broad smiles and a good bit of banter for everyone making their way home. To be honest, as the volunteer standing by us in the queue for the bus played 'Daydream Believers' through his megaphone and laughed along with the crowds, I was questioning if he was a. human b. on something or c. sane.
No comments:
Post a Comment