Olympic impressions, vol 3

Many of my impressions seem to be similar to those recorded by visitors to the Ancient Olympic Games.

Happy faces!

London felt like a different city during the Olympic Games. (Perhaps it still does, as the Paralympics haven't finished yet.)

On the buses and trains you could tell who was off to the Games by their happy faces. The volunteers who directed us around the venues, helped us find loos and places to eat, and saw us on our way afterwards were usually smiling. And they teased, sang, danced and joked, so that we too always had a smile on our faces. Even the army was cheerful and chatty.

Excitement!

At the events I went to, the spectators cheered British and other athletes alike, and we waved, and chanted, and stood up to urge them on. 

Skills!

I watched beach volleyball, trampolining and athletics live, and judo and gymnastics and diving and boxing and lots more on television. I was awestruck to see people so skilled, so practiced, so highly trained, and so dedicated to being perfect.

 

Media

Greenwich Park: spot the camera!

And I learned a little about how the media get their amazing shots.

(in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts)

Taken by Yair Haklai in 2008, St Petersburg

No cameras in Ancient Greece, of course. In those days the media consisted of painters and stone and bronze sculptors. Most of the visual records of the Ancient Olympics that have survived are in stone or are painted on vases. Bronze statues, of which there were thousands, were made with the cutting-edge technologies of the time. Themis, the hero of The Boy with Two Heads, learns some of them during the story. Sadly the vast majority of large bronzes have been melted down - often recycled as weapons ...

(If you've been following my blog, you've seen this wrestlers picture before.)

Olympic Impressions, vol 1

London is now gearing up for the Paralympics, but I'm not going to be able to go to them after all. So my live Olympic Experiences are now over for 2012.

What impressed me most at the main Games?

One thing was the colours!
You probably noticed this on television, but it intrigued me that many of the venues had a trade-mark colour. (There were 43 venues listed throughout the UK, and I and my family only visited 7, so I am over-generalising!)

Horse Guards Parade - Beach Volleyball

Purple was for Horse Guards Parade - and the Serpentine:

The Serpentine in Hyde Park - Marathon Swimming 

The Serpentine in Hyde Park - Marathon Swimming dais

The North Greenwich Arena was pink ...

North Greenwich Arena - Women's Trampoline

... while the Riverbank Arena went for blue (mainly).

Riverbank Arena - Hockey

Earls Court arena - Volleyball

Earl's Court was turquoise for the Volleyball ...

Copper Box - Handball (photo: Wikipedia)

... as was the Copper Box for Handball.

The Stadium itself had its black and white seating. But the green of the grass was the colour the spectators saw most of, day ...

... and night.

All these colours contrast with what the scene would have been like in Ancient Olympia. There, the only Stadium would have had a pale sandy track. The sides where the spectators stood would have been almost bare earth under the relentless August sun. In Ancient Olympia it was the temples, the statues, and the crowds that provided the colour.

... to be continued with other impressions ...