Five Rings - 2/8

Blue - Eight badminton players have been sent home from the games after intentionally trying to lose games late in pool play in order to gain an apparently easier draw later in the tournament.  The punishment is very severe given the fact that there was no rule expressly outlawing such a strategy.  However, the athlete's oath taken on behalf of all competitors at the opening ceremony promises to compete '...in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honor of our teams'. I don't think there's any question that those players were ignoring that oath, and as such don't really understand what it is to be Olympians.

Black -

Red - Tickets have been the biggest source of complaints about the whole London Games, I think.  First it was the ballot, where some people ended up with more tickets than they knew what to do with and most were left frustrated.  Then the unused tickets and empty seats which have blighted the past two Summer Olympics struck London.  Now there are tiny releases of spare seats which are triggering electronic bunfights and in practical terms mean a 25 minute wait to find that the seats you requested are no longer available, during which time all your second, third, fourth and seventeenth choices have gone too.  I spent a fruitless hour tilting at windmills tonight, not for the first time.

Gold - I'm still angry about the hidden Olympic flame.  Seb Coe has been very defensive when questioned, saying that "not a tourist attraction" and that LOCOG is following the example of the London games in 1948, when it was also kept inside the athletics stadium.  Just a thought, Lord Coe, but maybe the reason that was last done in 1948 is that someone had a better idea?  At that point scaffolding was probably rationed, or rooftop cauldrons of flame judged a risk for bombing raids.  Seb, you've misjudged the mood badly on this one.

Green - All home champions are to be commemorated in special edition stamps by the Royal Mail.  The Glover and Stanning one gets there faster than any of it's competitors, and the Bradley Wiggins stamp is equally valid in France.

Park Life

When you see a shop with queueing space outside for over five hundred people, it's hard not to be curious about what lies within. The Olympic Megastore is a vast space, filled with all manner of kit that I'd love if it didn't cost more than most of the tickets I've bought for this fortnight. £50 for an admittedly nice hoodie is seep, but £65 for a GB football shirt is getting silly. Found a display of flags, and was interested to see who was and wasn't being catered for. Aside from the obvious demand for the British flag, the big sellers are Jamaica and China, friendly staff member Kira explains. She had to disappoint a Canadian couple yesterday, and the French flags have been stashed away in the storeroom. Surprisingly you can't get an Irish flag either. Americans bring their own. Write your own punchline. Reminded that the best Olympic mascot by far was Barcelona's Catalan sheepdog Cobi. Wenlock and Mandeville feel painfully over-designed.

The park itself is built with ambitious confidence in the English weather. Almost no sheltered areas open for public milling around. Some lovely grass areas which fill quickly around lunch time, and look beautiful now. Not sure how they'll be after two solid weeks of the world's feet and patriotically-themed picnic blankets.

The commercialism for which the Olympics are so often criticised is actually fairly unobtrusive here. You'll get annoyed by roving flashmobs of Hare Krishna wannabes trying to sing about how wonderful coca cola is, but apart from that it's not too bad.

The absence of the Olympic flame (hidden inside the main stadium) is utterly shameful. How can an organising committee who got the relay so right get this so absurdly wrong? The flame is the symbol and the life of the whole games, not just something to be lit and forgotten about by everyone save the track and field competitors.

The other huge problem with the park lies in the landscaping around the big screens. Taking inspiration from Wimbledon's don't-call-me-Henman Hill, the architects have installed a huge screen where events are shown throughout the day. The problem is that they've pointed it straight at a hill that's covered in trees and flowers, while tiny slivers of grass off to the sides get a sliver of the action. A neat row of trees hides the screen entirely on one. These sitting areas (brought to you by British Airways) are ringed by sloping borders of wildflowers, which just three days in are being trodden into paths for people who don't want to take the long way round, and will look terrible in a fortnight. Any attempt to enforce a 'capacity' in these areas by creating only one entry point has been rendered completely moot. It's all been spectacularly badly thought out.

The mood, though, is upbeat. I'm fortunate that the sun is making a decent stab at shining, and the crowds are picnicing happily. The stars of the games continue to be the volunteers, almost all of whom are helpful, eager to have a chat, and knowledgable about the park.

I'm off to watch some handball for the first time, but more on my experience in the Aquatic Centre to follow soon.

Cooking up an Opening Ceremony

Ingredients

Two thousand volunteers
£27 million
One mad directorial genius
4oz self-deprecation

Mix all ingredients, stir, bake for 2 hours. Slowly stir in the cream of the world's athletes. Cook over the naked flame from two hundred tiny cauldrons.

Serves 80,000

* * *


Food was all that was missing. And bad teeth. From the moment it became clear that mad scientist Lord Danny of Trainspotting had decided to confront every possible joke about being British head-on by making it first and on our own terms, all that was missing was some British food. I would have gone for celeb power and given Jamie Oliver a giant kitchen set at one end of the stadium staffed with volunteers in Little Chef outfits and given him the length of the ceremony to prepare an affordable yet nutritionally-acceptable meal for the athletes to eat at the end. And some for Liz too, God knows she looked like she could have used a snack. Gordon Ramsay with a head-mic screaming obscenities would have made a nice change of pace from the Underworld medley while the athletes arrived, from time to time. But that's why they picked Sir Danny and not me. That and that Slumdog thing.

Under the juicy central premise, we were served a taster menu of entertainment. Highlights included:

A large British ham, over-cooked. His Brunel/Prospero was a sort of tribute act to his own rendition of the St Crispin's Day speech in Henry V. The more palatable Mark Rylance, who was forced to pull out after a family tragedy, was missed.

A dark sauce. From the scars of industrialison to the nightmares of small children, this ceremony was gloriously unafraid of darkening the mood. I've never seen anything so candid, it was the perfect response to Beijing's state-textbook Chinese history.

Crumpet. Crumpet dressed as nurses! Things are looking up!

[side note: you can't introduce hundreds of children to the theme tune from The Exorcist and not have one 360-degree head spin. Or was the unfulfilled promise of head spin more delicious? No. No. They should have seen it through.]

Chicken a la Queen. Strap a parachute on already, your majesty. You big wuss.

A runner Bean. And Rowan crushed it. Totally made the leap from 'much loved' to 'national treasure'. Welcome to the club, son. Take a seat next to The Venerable Baron Danny.

A sweet finish. From Captain Becks on his speedboat, through Steve Redgrave and the perfectly-judged handoff to the next generation, the flame of the games we were promised seven years ago in Singapore would be a gift to the younger generation was lit with perfection. From the moment I realised what was going to happen to the final ascent of the beautiful composite torch, my heart stopped. Martin Luther King once said that in life there are moments of unutterable fulfilment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols we call words. I'm not even going to try with this one.


* * *

My own opening recipe having been served around a large bottle of Amaretto, I confronted my first Olympic morning with some concern. However, a largely empty train has delivered me to the All England Lawn Tennis and Bowls Club, which today and for the next week is going All World. Let's do this.