Sunday at the Olympics, Part 1

I got up at 4:45 (the earliest I've been up in a long, long time), had a shower, got my things, checked out and headed for the bus stop. I was there in plenty of time for the 5:30 bus, and this time I checked very carefully that this bus was going to Athens! The bus trip was very quick, so I had plenty of time to get breakfast when I arrived. I went to Everest, which is a fast-food style café, and I had a cheese and bacon croissant and a hot chococaramel. I caught the metro in to OAKA and it was again very quick and easy, and I arrived at the complex at about 7:50. It was all quite deserted, as you'd expect, so I went to the velodrome to see if it had opened up early. It had, and the cyclists had already started warming up so I had a great time watching them for the next hour or so! There were often 15-20 cyclists on the track at once, and it was funny to see some of the sprinters tag on the end of the pursuit teams and follow them round for a couple of laps. I went and sat in an "official photographer's position" for a while, it was right on the fence so I could get some extreme closeups:







The Australian pursuit team didn't take part in the warmup which was a shame, but all the Aussie sprinters were out there.

My seat was unfortunately one of the few in the velodrome that was in the sun, although about halfway through the session it got high enough for me to be in the shade. I'm so glad they built a roof though, I assumed that I would be out in the sun and it would have been very unpleasant!

I knew that I would be seeing a qualifying session, but I thought that I would still see some head-to-head races. However my session only consisted of the sprinters and then the pursuit teams setting qualifying times in order to progress to the races themselves. However on the plus side I saw Australians set the fastest time in each of the events, and they all went on to win gold medals! It was a great atmosphere, all the seats were full by the end, and the German fans were especially good, shouting "Hup! Hup! Hup! Hup!" every time one of their riders passed.





So all in all I had a great time at the velodrome, probably not as exciting as the water polo but definitely better results!

Next up was Australia vs Brazil in women’s basketball, and unfortunately I was in the far north of Athens and it was happening in the far south. It looked easy enough to get to though, there was a tram connection on the transport map I had that would take me directly to the stadium. So off I set...

The first hitch was when I arrived at Syntagma Square, one of the connecting stations, but after some searching and asking I found that they hadn't actually built the tram line to that station. So I had to go back to the metro and go another couple of stations, and then I found the tram stop easily enough. The ticket machine didn't give me my 40 euro cents change, but otherwise the journey out was OK, although it did take well over an hour. I had a seat though so I was happy enough.

We arrived at the "Helliniko" stop, and since I was heading to "Helliniko Olympic Complex", and the stop was right next to the complex on the map, and the stop was actually right next to the complex, I figured that it was the one to go for. However this proved not to be the case. A group of us (I certainly wasn't the only one who got it wrong) crossed an extremely busy road at a pedestrian crossing that cars completely ignored, walked two stops worth along the road, and then found we had to go back across the same extremely busy road at a pedestrian crossing that cars completely ignored, in order to be able to take the bridge back across the road and get into the complex.

All this of course was in high-30s heat, so I wasn't in the best of moods after I found that Helliniko is just a big flat expanse with enormous stadiums dotted around, and virtually no shade anywhere.





I was quite hungry so I went and got lunch - I got Gyros (shavings of meat off those spinning pillars), was €5 but was actually an excellent meal so I didn't feel too bad about the huge markup. I had to drag a table from the sun into the shade, and it was the last one available so I was lucky to get it. I filled my water bottle at the bubblers (was warm here, had been cold at OAKA) and headed to the basketball stadium. Unfortunately they hadn't opened the gates yet, even though it was only 45 mins to tip-off (I got in to water polo and cycling well over an hour before the start of each event). And there was absolutely no shade at the gates... so I went and stood under a small canopy for 20 minutes. Naturally there weren't any seats under the canopy, they were all out directly under the sun.

They finally opened up the gates, and I headed in. The stadium was enormous, it was quite clear that it was not going to be full for the Australia match, although the Greek match was on second so I thought it might fill up for that. The players came out for the warmup, with Lauren naturally getting the loudest cheer. I was in the upper section, and the main Australian support section was directly below me. I thought about going down and joining them but I could see that they were having their tickets carefully checked so it wasn't going to happen.

The game itself was great for the first half, especially in the first quarter when it looked like it was going to go down to the wire. A tall Brazilian was getting all the rebounds and they were shooting really well! But in the second half Brazil just seemed to stop defending properly, and they weren't even competing for rebounds, and Australia just ran away with the match. Lauren was definitely the star; she hardly missed a shot all match.





So it was great to see the win but it didn't have the excitement of the water polo.





I thought that the next match would be starting very soon but the timer countdown said it was over an hour away! So that meant I would only have time to see one quarter before I had to head off to the marathon. When the players finally came out to begin the warmup, the Greeks got an enormous cheer from the crowd, and a big ‘Ole!’ as each player was introduced. However when the Japanese players came out, they were greeted with very loud boos and whistles, it was much worse than at the water polo last night. It continued throughout the match every time the Japanese had the ball. So I didn’t mind leaving early as I was disgusted with the crowd. The Greeks were up by about 15 points at quarter time so I figured the match was over anyway… I found out later that they only ended up winning by 1 or 2 points so it would have been a good match after all!