London Olympic Update - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Welcome to the London *summer* Olympics.

What a week! We have been to basketball (France versus U.S.A.), a very rainy session of women's road cycling, the men's all-around individual gymnastics final, various track events, the women's marathon, and singles and doubles tennis. Woosh.

All these amazing athletes have left me feeling really out of shape, but inspired at the pool. I am swimming the fastest 100s I have ever swum in my life. Now I just need my plantar fasciitis and metatarsalgia to heal so I can get running seriously again!


 
Anyway, the 2012 Olympic highlights so far (at least for me) have been watching gymnast Danell Leyva winning the all-around bronze medal, Jessica Ennis dominating the last heptathlon event (the 800 meter run) to win the gold medal and then leading the rest of the 25 female heptathletes around the track for a victory lap, seeing Mo Farah get gold in the men's 10K and Galen Rupp get silver, and watching Juan Martin del Potro win the bronze over Novak Djokovic from Slovenia in tennis. That was some spectacular tennis from two really cute dudes.

Sorry, it had to be said......they were cute.In any case, here are some pics.

Sweet view of the gym.

Remember when Dave was a gymnast, now he just competes in the beer Olympics?

More gymnasia!

1- Kohei Uchimura of Japan, 2- Marcel Nguyen of Germany, 3 - Danell Leyva of the U.S.

The winners' flags, I am trying to think of a clever WWII reference......nothing.

 

Headed to the track, and that thing is NOT a roller coaster - much to my dismay.

Awesome seats once again.

Will Claye praying after his long jump - he won the bronze!

Story of the night, Ennis getting the GOLD.

Ennis then led the heptathletes in a victory lap.

Men's 10K, these guys booked it.

American Galen Rupp won silver in the 10K, he was just 1 second behind the winner.

This was my first real in-person tennis match. That is Dave's dad by the way.

Argentina's del Potro, who beat out Serbia's Djokovic for the bronze medal.

As an aside, what the eff happened to this woman's boobs. Seriously.

We are taking a pause for a few days while Dave's parents take a trip to the English countryside. We have women's soccer (the gold medal match!) and more track later this week. Plus, the men's triathlon is tomorrow, which is a free event to watch. I will be heading over to Hyde Park to check it out.

 Here is a summary of other Olympic deets thus far:

The Good

• The athletes, of course. Their dedication and skill are inspiring! I am near tears after every race or competition. That is what it is all about after all.
•  No lines and efficient transit. You get a card with your Olympic ticket good for riding the Tube all day long for free. This makes so much sense, can you imagine the lines to buy Tube tickets with 40,000 people speaking 40 different languages. It would be chaos. Smart move London!
• Officials were fast to react to the whole "empty seat" controversy by releasing 12,000 additional tickets once they realized the douchey sponsors and big-wigs weren't even going to show up anyway. It is just too bad they didn't do it earlier. It was sooooo frustrating to watch all those empty seats at the early swim events knowing that I would have given my left arm to be there.

The Bad

• Food......just......awful. Perhaps it is because I have been in France twice this month, where heaven can be found in a simple sandwich of ham, Gruyere, butter, and fresh baguette. BUT the food at the London Olympics has been really sad. Amie - don't be a picky a-hole, you are at the OLYMPICS for the sports so shut up and deal with it - right? Yeah so most of the events we have attended, we are at the venue from 11:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m., or 6:50 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. A woman's gotta eat, and you cannot bring food or drinks into the venue. Please people, is it too much to ask for a simple turkey sandwich or something.
• So in addition to really bad food, they also run out of several of the items after about an hour. AND they don't wouldn't tell anyone or post a sign so the crowd just waits in huge lines to get to the front to hear that they have only one form of crap to sell you anyway, and it isn't the crap you want to eat. Really, how do you RUN OUT of bags of chips? Redic.
• The Olympic website is total shit. It is either wrong, has no information, or is continually broken. You want a map of the marathon course, good luck finding it. What a frustrating POS! I mean half the 16 year olds in Silicon Valley could have done a better job with that thing.  

The Ugly

• Infant crying at the bronze medal tennis match, AND THE PARENTS WOULDN'T LEAVE. After everyone in the audience started "shushing" them, dad finally took the baby outside. As he was walking out, the entire audience and the players all applauded him for leaving. Really, did that just happen?!?!
• So in addition to the piles of absolute crap they are serving as "food"at the venues, the service staff at the food and drink stands are universally appalling. Are you all stoned or just that dumb? I am thinking dumb, but it must be really really hard to find just so many dumb people and put them all in one place. These food stands sell about four things, and (as I mentioned) generally run out of three of them after the first hour. What is going on at the front of the lines? How hard is this?

OK, I feel better now.

We also went to Amboise, France last week. We rented a car and put together our own chateau tour through the Loire Valley. More on that later this week. It was so spectacular it deserves it's own post.

Peace out.