Beijing Part #4

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17th August
Early start this morning to get to the hockey. Watched GB in a disappointing 1-1 draw to Canada. This effectively ended their realistic chance of a medal.

Next we were off to the Rowing. GB were represented in 5 of the 8 events. The atmosphere here was brilliant. It seemed like the GB supporters here are the same people you would see on Henman Hill at Wimbledon - loads of Union Jack flags, stupid hats and face paints. It seems, though, that the smaller the country, the more crazy their fans were. The Danes were all singing together and at one point a man from Finland was teaching everyone in the crowd how to cheer on the Finnish team in Finnish!

Only GB rowing fans would come away from an event feeling slightly disappointed about only winning 1 gold and 2 silvers. We were happy though.

In the evening we were back in the Birds Nest to see another session of Athletics. Our men's high jumpers and our women's 400m runners all safley progressed to their finals. The highlight of this session was the men's 10,000m final. The Ethiopian who won it ran the last 100m in under 12 seconds - that is an utterly amazing thing to watch.

18th August
Up early again for Athletics. Watched the finals of the women's discus, women's pole vault, men's long jump, men's 300m steeplechase, women's 800m and men's 400m hurdles.

In that afternoon we headed to a lake in Beijing which reportedly had a "British house" where Brits could meet and watch the sport whilst enjoying a pint of ale and a roast dinner. Unfortunately it transpired that only members of the British Olympic Association and invited guests could get in. The Dutch had something similar, although theirs was open to all Dutch passport holders and was a huge hit with the Dutch people we met.

19th August
Spent the morning at the Forbidden City. This is over 1km long and nearly 1km wide. It used to be the Emperor's residence. It's a vast place with hundreds of buildings and gardens. Although it's hard not to be impressed with the scale, many of the rooms look the same so one you have seen one part, the rest becomes less interesting. Afterwards we walked through Tianamen Square which again is over 1km from one end to the other.

The evening was the big event - Christine Ohorugu in the women's 400m final. We had seats at about the 320 metre mark - just on the start of the finish straight. I had donned my Union Jack flag and my Union Jack top hat for the occasion. As she came around the second bend we could see she was fourth and prepared ourselves for disappointment. Just before she passed us, though, we could see she was catching and I started shouting as loudly as I could (I think slightly scaring the fans sitting around us). By the time she passsed us she was in third and catching the leaders. 10 more seconds of the loudest shouting I could manage and she'd won - just. It was the most dramatic race to watch and we were probably sitting in the best place in the stadium to see it. As an added bonus Germaine Mason took a hugely surprising silver in the High Jump. We also saw a Giant Estonian man win the Discus. On his lap of honour he proceeded to run the 100m course as quickly as he could - I don't think Usain Bolt has anything to worry about!

Had a lot of celebratory beer that evening whilst having my photo taken with hundreds of Chinese (and even a few Latvian) fans who found my had amusing. At one point they had to form a queue. Other British fans told us that we'd won loads of medals in Cycling today so a very good day indeed!

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