London Olympics Panic! - Britain's Useless Athletes Unable to Win Gold

vivatifosi

Sapphire wrote: »

Is it just me, or is anyone else finding the athletics boring? It all seems to be rather samey to me. If you don't particularly like team games, then all those volley ball and ping pong games don't appeal, either.

I am an athletics fan and its what I put in for tickets to. Having attended last night I can say it was fun - I've been to the Olympics how cool is that - but the timetable was really poorly organised for the evening. Such is the draw of Bolt, that people started leaving before the finals. Before the women's high jump had completed, about half the crowd had left and only about 20,000 remained to see Sally Pearson's medal celebration at the end - she had raced last night so why such a long delay? Surely gold medallists deserve hearing their national anthems in a packed stadium. Oh, and a big problem was the posh seats leaving early, the fans up in the rafters were more likely to stay to the end.

What they should have done is started the field events earlier, so that the women's high jump reached a crescendo at an appropriate time - as was the case on Saturday when Greg Rutherford won gold and put the medal ceremonies on earlier. I think MysticTrev was also there last night, so it will be interesting to hear what he though.

mystic_trev

vivatifosi wrote: »

I think MysticTrev was also there last night, so it will be interesting to hear what he though.

Agreed Viva, disappointing evening. Last Friday was a better night, and that was the first evening of the Athletics - mainly Qualifications and Prelims. Last night was too disjointed. I was in block 228 near the Olympic Flame and Javelin, so decent seats although I've spent nearly £500 on four events.:eek:Oh well, a once in a lifetime event. I've got to say I actually enjoyed the Hockey and beach volleyball the most, I guess I was just unlucky with the Track and Field.

I'll go back to watching the Spar European Cup for a live event. I like it because you get the best of the Athletics. Every race is a final, it's over two days and is usually somewhere warm. Unfortunately next year it's in Gateshead:(

RenovationMan

It was interesting to hear Chris Hoy say he might stay on for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2 years time and ride competitively in the "Chris Hoy Velodrome". It's great that at least one sport has a lasting legacy from us hosting Games - 3 games (Commonwealth manchester, Olympic London and Commonwealth Glasgow) and 3 world class indoor velodromes perfectly spaced geographically.

It's just a shame that we couldn't keep the olympic stadium as a world class athletics centre, albeit with reduced seating once the games are over (for instance the Glasgow velodrome will have 4500 seats, reducing to 2500 once the games have ended).

kabayiri

I still think the organisers could have had a more fluid approach to ticket sales.

I saw the Women's football semi-final the other night between Canada and USA. It was a real grudge match, really well played and an exciting conclusion.

The girls played their hearts out and deserved a full Old Trafford audience.

Sadly, it looked like most of the upper tiers were empty.

Now my DH looked into getting tickets for an OT event like this. She told me they wanted £50 per adult seat, which is a bit pricey in my view when you work out the cost for the full family including travel.

I think they would rather see empty seats than sell off tickets last minute still.

kabayiri

vivatifosi wrote: »

...
Oh, and a big problem was the posh seats leaving early, the fans up in the rafters were more likely to stay to the end.
...

Indeed.

I only saw the swimming events on tv, but it was noticeable how the empty seats were in the lower tiers.

Maybe the corporate/posh guests are well and truly spoiled, and don't have that desire to see everything.

I saw a comment from a lady whose husband had acquired tickets to a few events all within the Olympic park. They chose to only attend 1 and spend the rest of the time wandering about in the complex.

Contrast this with the fantastic crowds in the park watching the big screens showing the cycling.

Kennyboy66

mystic_trev wrote: »

Agreed Viva, disappointing evening. Last Friday was a better night, and that was the first evening of the Athletics - mainly Qualifications and Prelims. Last night was too disjointed. I was in block 228 near the Olympic Flame and Javelin, so decent seats although I've spent nearly £500 on four events.:eek:Oh well, a once in a lifetime event. I've got to say I actually enjoyed the Hockey and beach volleyball the most, I guess I was just unlucky with the Track and Field.

I'll go back to watching the Spar European Cup for a live event. I like it because you get the best of the Athletics. Every race is a final, it's over two days and is usually somewhere warm. Unfortunately next year it's in Gateshead:(

As you seem to know a bit about Athletics, do you know how the stadium capacity will change for the World Athletics in 2017 ?

chewmylegoff

kabayiri wrote: »

Indeed.

I only saw the swimming events on tv, but it was noticeable how the empty seats were in the lower tiers.

Maybe the corporate/posh guests are well and truly spoiled, and don't have that desire to see everything.

I saw a comment from a lady whose husband had acquired tickets to a few events all within the Olympic park. They chose to only attend 1 and spend the rest of the time wandering about in the complex.

Contrast this with the fantastic crowds in the park watching the big screens showing the cycling.

i think to some extent the swimming suffered from being first up, before they had managed to react to the obvious problems caused by the fact that they had given about 10 times more tickets to the "olympic family" than were ever going to be used (TBF this seems to happen every time, and i assume it is fundamentally the IOC's fault for demanding the tickets in the first place).

i went to the final of the 3m springboard diving in the aquatics centre the other night and it was properly rammed, there were a very small number of seats free, but you will never be 100% full because people won't turn up because they are ill / dead / know someone who is ill or dead, got tickets to a better event at the last minute / got too drunk watching hoy on the big screen and fell in the river etc.

also, the aquatics centre probably looked worse than it was on TV because the "olympic family" seating is right in the front and in the direct eyeline of the cameras, whereas the rest of the seating isn't really, so even though there were 16,500 people in a 17,000 capacity venue it looked like it was half empty.

RenovationMan

chewmylegoff wrote: »

but you will never be 100% full because people won't turn up because they are ill / dead / know someone who is ill or dead, got tickets to a better event at the last minute / got too drunk watching hoy on the big screen and fell in the river etc.

LOL. :rotfl:

Jennifer_Jane

I've been watching quite a bit of the dressage and am upset by the idea of someone 'giving a horse a bloody mouth'. Just don't know how that could happen with the virtually invisible signals given to the horse during dressage. (Or what kind of bit would be used). I've ridden in some rough places and seen some extremely inexperienced riders, charging around (the helicopter ambulances were regular visitors to this place - the horses were very badly trained, and did mostly what they wanted to - I've been chucked off numerous times, and we never rode with hard hats but it was countryside!) and I've never heard of bloody mouths. They are examined carefully by vets and the bits checked afterward, so I would hope that there would be a disqualification for cruelty.

I did see someone give his horse a whack with a crop in the Show-Jumping but it was just one whack (I am not condoning it), horses are quite tough and as they usually don't belong to the riders, and are worth millions (according to Clare Balding), then I imagine the owners wouldn't like their investments being badly handled.

I hope the report was incorrect.

(PS - is there more than one Clare Balding? She's now at the Serpentine, would have thought she would be at the dressage for the individual final.)

kabayiri

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i think to some extent the swimming suffered from being first up, before they had managed to react to the obvious problems caused by the fact that they had given about 10 times more tickets to the "olympic family" than were ever going to be used (TBF this seems to happen every time, and i assume it is fundamentally the IOC's fault for demanding the tickets in the first place).

i went to the final of the 3m springboard diving in the aquatics centre the other night and it was properly rammed, there were a very small number of seats free, but you will never be 100% full because people won't turn up because they are ill / dead / know someone who is ill or dead, got tickets to a better event at the last minute / got too drunk watching hoy on the big screen and fell in the river etc.

also, the aquatics centre probably looked worse than it was on TV because the "olympic family" seating is right in the front and in the direct eyeline of the cameras, whereas the rest of the seating isn't really, so even though there were 16,500 people in a 17,000 capacity venue it looked like it was half empty.

I get what you are saying but is it beyond imagination to conceive a system where people queue up for last minute "any seat going slots?". If IOC family seats are not taken up, they lose the allocation, tough luck, etc.

There have been thousands of people just turning up at the park, I'm sure many of these would queue up for last minute seats.

Maybe I'm odd but I think making the Olympics accessible to the large numbers of taxpayers who paid for the thing is more important than pandering to a bunch of IOC !!!!!!!!!!s.

[edit: apparently nomoneyloader is censored!]