My London 2012 Olympic diary: Day 4

Day 4: Going back to your first love

I knew I would love everything about the Olympics, I have always been following them very closely. The furthest I can remember goes back to 1992 with Albertville hosting the winter Games a few months before the Olympic torch settled in Barcelona.

Every time, during two weeks, I could show what some consider as fanaticism others as madness, swallowing hundreds of hours of sports on television. Even the most surprising ones (yes I have a deep interest in curling and weightlifting every four years).

Despite this long lived love affair, one thing (wife and kid apart) easily makes my heart beat faster and has been doing it ever since I started to store childhood memories into my head : football.

The Olympic Games area huge event but overall football is bigger. And everybody has to agree on this. A football World Cup draws way much more passion (and money) than the Games can do.

What always got me sad is the fact that these two could not get along at all. The world football governing body, scared of losing some sponsorship deals to a top level Olympic football tournament, always did everything it could to make sure the football event of the summer Olympics remained quite uninteresting. Their main leverage to this extend is to forbid players over 23 years old to take part in the tournament. This way, they are making sure most of the best players in the world usually attracting crowds to the stadium are missing out on these tournaments.

Despite all this, I could not help but staying in love with football, even during the Games. This is why my combined passion for stadiums and the people's game led me to Wembley on this evening.

Following some shopping, a traditional east end curry lunch and a goodbye waving to Andrew's godfather, I was turning myself towards the biggest stadium of the island. Tonight, a women's semi final game was happening there with France facing Japan. As Alexia does not love football enough (yet) to join me when she does not have to and as the Wembley stadium policy about babies was a bit unclear, I would go there with Matteo, an Italian friend of us leaving in the Olympic city.

I already came once to the UK largest football venue but I was only here to start a ten kilometres race from the pitch. This time, I would discover it in my favourite configuration.

When the game was kicked off, I was very surprised to notice that large parts of the stands were completely empty. Later on the official count would prove me right with only the two third of the ninety thousand seats having people officially seating on. I knew that football tickets were not all sold for this tournament but believed apparently naïvely that a semi-final encounter would be sold out,

The women's display was interesting, full of will and energy. But even if their abilities improved considerably in the past 15 years or so, you cannot feel sad for the numerous technical and tactical mistakes still happening during the course of a top level game. Nonetheless, the pace of it added to the importance of such an encounter, made it very enjoyable to watch.

The scenario did help the crowd getting emotional though. At half time, the world champions were leading France by a single goal, thanks to a deadly mishandled ball by the French keeper.

A few beer and sandwich minutes later my friend and I came back to our seats just in time to witness the second goal scored by the Japanese. It was 2-0 even if both teams seemed to play on even terms so far.

The remaining 40 minutes would see the France team outrageously dominate its opponent, Japanese players never looked so tired and so small on the pitch. France was creating great chances every minute or so, the atmosphere was rising, even more following the French first goal with 15 minutes to go. Then I could tell for sure that there were more French fans in the stadium than Japanese or British or Swedish (Sweden was eliminated by France in the previous round), Despite some crazy chances to score an equaliser in the dying minutes, the score did not evolve. Japan secured a medal while France will have to play one more game for a potential bronze.

On our way back home I had to face my first and only transport dysfunction of the week. The tube was jammed and we had to wait for almost an hour standing in the Olympic way linking the stadium and the station. The colourful and joyful atmosphere helped the time go by. Mexican waves even took form, until the horse mounted police asked us politely to stop in order to keep the animals calm.

A few trains later I was home and asleep, recharging batteries before the following day.

My London 2012 Olympic diary: Day 3

Day 3: Walking around in sunny London and discovering the BBC coverage

The third day begins with a brunch in the city, at the “Giraffe” restaurant selected by Jean-François. On this Sunday I had tickets to see the evening fencing finals in the men's team foil event. But this time, my wife would enjoy it with our fencing friend and I will take care of our baby. Before hand, we had some sightseeing to do.

The weather was exceptionally kind when we left our empty plates behind us, permitting an enjoyable digestive walk through empty streets. The scariest of all the city veins were the ones used earlier in the morning by the ladies running the marathon. Still closed for traffic at the time we walked by, they really made the place look like a post apocalyptic ghost town.

I took advantage of my location to cast an eye on the site I have been working on for my 18 last months in London. The Heron Tower was now fully completed, including an enormous fish tank in the reception lobby and a sushi bar at one of the top levels.

We continued our route and realised quite suddenly that we were just next to the "Club France", the temporary bar opened by the French Olympic committee on the Thames north bank. We walked once past it without noticing any entrance. When we found it in a backstreet, we got disenchanted. There were a hundred metre long queue ahead of closed doors to cope with if you wanted to cheer on Olympians in French atmosphere. We turned our heels on it, being not enough interested to bear the wait.

What we did instead was going to Switzerland. Figuratively. Right across London bridge was located the Swiss House, the red and white nemesis of the Club France. We felt much more welcome here, with an open air bar, a giant screen showing the sporting action, free chocolate tasting and even a climbing wall...

The fact that the biggest star in Swiss sports, Roger Federer, was currently being trashed by Andy Murray in the men's tennis final, did not alter much the atmosphere. After all it was a silver medal he did not have yet in his trophy cabinet.

Later in the afternoon, when the time came to get closer to the Excel arena, we moved away and decided to try a scenic way, using the brand new cable car line linking the docklands and North Greenwich over the Thames. We surely enjoyed the view (for those daring to look through the window) and did not waste any of the few seconds it lasted.

Next, it was time for the men in this family to go back home and leave wife and friend who were getting into the fencing hall.

Once there, I had the chance to discover what the BBC meant by a full digital coverage of the Games. When I arrived home, I noticed that my Italian friend providing me shelter for the week was watching the athletics on the television screen. During the few minutes I needed to take care of my baby boy, I had a few glances at what happened in the living room. And I successively caught sight of a water polo game, some fencing, some volley ball and much more. When I finally settled down, I understood that there were actually 24 BBC sports channels dedicated to the Olympics. Basically, every event was broadcasted live, you just had to choose the one you preferred. You could (and we did) watch the 100m semi-finals and check the evolution of the scores in a few other sports between races, then change to the channel dedicated to the triple jump event and then get back to the fencing...

What a revolution it was for the French TV viewer I was, forced to watch what the programmer decided to put forward (meaning either a French medallist or Usain Bolt) on the single French channel showing the Olympics back home...

The night went like this all the way, moving virtually from an Olympic venue to another as we fancied, until a Jamaican superman decided to bring the whole media attention to him.

Alexia came back home and we quickly went to bed, once again exhausted.

My London 2012 Olympic diary: Day 2

Day 2: The sun rises in the east

Today’s event was leading me back to the Excel centre in order to witness the first rounds of the men’s team epee event in fencing. Wife and kid were resting at home while I woke up early to meet my friend, godfather of my son and keen fencer, before the morning session starts.

On my way out towards the east of the city, trying to get after the sun setting ion the horizon, I realized that London was strangely very quiet. My district line travel from Putney to the east end would not have scared an agoraphobic. I did not meet more than a dozen living souls before stepping in the DLR train. It was around 8 in the morning nonetheless my former London life never got me used to this public transportation emptiness at any time of the day. Apparently the Mayor Johnson scared the Londoners off efficiently.

My fencing expert was awaiting for me on the arrival platform, we then eased past the security checks and made it to our arena an hour before the show was due to start. A few video clips, an orchestra playing movie themes and a guess-whose-flag-is-it game (which one goes between Taipei and Thailand by the way?) kept us busy until the first contestants walked in.

Bizarrely enough, the event started with the quarter final encounters, having only 8 nations registered for it. Not really the idea I had about universality of the sports held during the Games… The room was only partially filled in at the beginning but we already noticed some very interesting neighbours: a nervous epeeist from New Jersey and her very proud American boyfriend, a couple of very shy Russian fans cheering discreetly on their team but also a half dozen of South Korean fans equipped with their mandatory tiny flags and their singing leader. This was already a lot more multicultural than the day before.

The encounters went on under the accurate explanations from my personal expert every time I had a technical question. The break between the quarter final and the semis allowed us to (have a beer and) begin a geopolitical talk of some sort.

In my memory, fencing was almost exclusively a European sport. But today the last four teams fighting for medals were China, South Korea, Russia and the USA. Basically ten years ago these countries (exception made of Russia) did not have enough people practicing fencing at a serious level to register a team for the Olympics. Since the 2008 Games were awarded to Beijing, Chinese institutions set up a scheme to be represented and competitive in every single Olympic event. South Korea and the USA followed their lead and were already rewarded. Countries fencing for over a century had been wiped off the charts by others learning it in less than a tenth of this time.

The outcome of the semi finals would reinforce our thesis as the gold medal would finally be decided between the two Asian countries.

My daily Olympic event was now over, it was mid afternoon, and we decided to try our luck at the Olympic Park and have a taste of the real deal. Arrived in Stratford, we followed the mass of people being lead like cattle towards the entrance. Then we realised that there was no possible entry to the park without a ticket for an event happening on the same day within the park. Too bad for my mate who won't have another chance (I will...).

In despair, we walked away, across Victoria park (met along the way Fabrice Boraschi, the most famous Frenchman in London with his family), picked up my wife and son to finally reach Broadway market where friends joined us for a traditional Belgian beers stop followed by the most amazing Argentinean steakhouse in town. And then the curtain was down on my second Olympic day.