Olympic Update
I went to my first Olympic event on Friday – the swimming. I only had a ticket for the morning session so saw the heats and a couple of semi-finals. The women were swimming the 50m freestyle (which Inge De Bruin) won and I also saw the men’s 1500 heats. There was a Greek guy called Spiros who lead for about the first 25 laps so the crowd was going mad. He didn’t win the heat and Grant Hackett went on to win the final that evening.
The Olympic complex is nice although lacking in shade. They also have the typical Greek landscaping – trees in a a bed of dirt – and there wasn’t very much shade. This was particularly the case at the pool as they didn’t get the roof on and it was so hot (40C+). This was a real shame as it meant that people had to keep leaving the stands to cool-off downstairs where there was a bit of shade.
On Tuesday Christos and I go to the athletics which is on at night-time. It starts at 7.30pm so the heat won’t be so bad. In fact at night it has been really nice and there are lots of people about. Athens has definately cleaned-up since last year although the pavements are still deathtraps. The train system is brand new and they run every few minutes so we haven’t had to wait at all.
I also managed to catch the women’s marathon which was just up the road from our hotel. I saw the top 6 women (they were only 5 minutes from the end but still going strong). I don’t think I could run 50m in this heat!
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