Hi everyone. How are you all? Enjoying the Olympics? I thought I’d just squeeze in a quick blog tonight while the toad in the hole is cooking in the oven as I’m out for the next couple of nights (first cinema trip since first lockdown 2020 and 2nd tennis game in 15 + years).
There is something special about the Olympics. I’ve always loved it since my sister and I had our own Olympics in the back garden as children. I think the medals were made of cardboard coloured with felt tip pens on ribbons of wool. I seem to remember we had a steeplechase as one of our events galloping around the garden jumping over paddling pools of water 😂😂. Such fun! That was back in the good old days when children were allowed to get so bored they had to amuse themselves and create things.
In 2012 I volunteered as a gamesmaker for London 2012. I worked on the reception at the medical centre for the rowing and canoeing village at Royal Holloway College in Egham. I quite enjoyed it, have a few good memories, although I can’t say it was the most fulfilling experience of my life, nor did I make friends for life amongst the other volunteers which somehow I had been naively expecting.
Anyway, I still have a soft spot for the Olympics and have tried to get into watching a bit of Tokyo 2020 (am I the only one who wishes they’d just rename it 2021!? I’m hating this reminder of the last year of the pandemic and it is actually 2021 now!).
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking the BBC coverage doesn’t seem as good as usual and so far whenever I get a moment to switch on, it’s not the event I’d prefer to watch, but it is interesting nonetheless.
My first attempt to see some Olympics was the women’s air rifle shooting.
I’m sure it’s quite fun if you’re actually doing this, but as a spectator… Zzzzz.. it’s really slow and boring.. and quiet. I couldn’t get excited about it at all. The rifles look pretty weird, don’t you think?
I then moved on to watch the men’s cycling road race. Now that was much more exciting, watching the race. An American guy was doing really well until he suddenly got cramp near the end and the guy from Ecuador finished way ahead of the others and was so happy 😀. Similarly the women’s road race was great. A relatively unknown lady from Austria won that. Again, miles ahead of the others. Superb.
Tom Daley and Matty Lee were absolutely stunning in the synchronised diving event. Thoroughly deserving of their gold for team GB I thought.
I note that skateboarding and surfing are now in the Olympics. I’m not sure what happened to the tug of war event? Apparently that was a feature many times in the past. And also music and the arts in the original Olympics. They had a herald/bugling competition I believe, back in the day.
Well this quick blog isn’t that quick 😂 it seems. We’ve just had a pause for toad in the hole. Yum. I use Nigel Slaters’ recipe for this. We had it with baked beans. I like Nigel Slater, David says he’s really weird, but we both like his toad in the hole recipe.
Right, back to the Olympics. So today’s event had us a little flummoxed to start with. It was basketball with just one end of the court in use and one hoop. There were girls in one team of 5, and 4 boys and 1 girl in the other team. We were confused by only one hoop, half a court and also the mixed genders. This is called 5 x 5 basketball and after that we watched 3 x 3 basketball that was gripping. There are actually 4 people on each team in the 3 x 3 but one is on the bench and they keep swapping players in. We saw Japan v France all girls on each side and France won for a place in the semi final. One of the Japanese players had to be carried off the court by her team members at the end, I mean off the funny half court thing, in tears as she could no longer stand. All lots of drama. I’d like to be shooting those goals.. 2 points scoring way from the back, must be a fantastic feeling whooshing the ball over everyone’s heads and straight down the hoop. So there!
Here are the Italian girls v mainly Chinese boys. We spent a long time debating whether the boys might actually be girls who looked like boys, if you see what I mean, until I googled it and found it can be a mixed gender event. It was nice to see the girls beating the boys even with the boys’ height advantage, most interesting!
So team GB are doing rather well now. We are fifth on the medals leaderboard.
Now that’s weird too, ROC = Russian Olympic Committee. Can’t we just call them Russia? Obviously not, politics is everywhere! This is to do with a doping scandal in 2015 and Russia itself being banned from Tokyo 2020.
Good luck Team GB, more golds tomorrow please!!! Xx
The Windsor Waffle 