Our Olympic Experience - a family day out

On one of our days off, Al and Rich joined us - they had tickets for the Germany v Australia Men's hockey semi final.

We met up at Stratford's own microbrewery and pub ...

... then adjourned to the Olympic Park

Australia were the top seeds 

Germany were ranked second

Moritz Fürste and Jamie Dwyer

Matthias Witthaus 

Dwyer and Florian Fuchs

Christopher Zeller

Witthaus scores Germany's third goal

Fuchs grabs a fourth for Germany

Natascha Keller, hockey legend (with more than 400 caps) and Germany's flag bearer at the Opening Ceremony, was well pleased with the Men's victory.

Editor's note: Germany went on to win the final against Netherlands (2-1). GB Men finished fourth but GB Women won the Bronze medal with a victory against New Zealand.

Rich had a ticket for the GB v Netherlands semi final in the evening but Al needed to get back home, so we caught the Javelin to St Pancras - the journey takes a mere 6 minutes!

Our Olympic Experience - Tales from the Riverbank

This was our workplace for the duration of the Games.

This is the view from our office

As mentioned in an earlier blog, we were sports statisticians

One of us did a running commentary of one of the teams when they were in possession - with particular attention to any shots on goal and another member of the team input the details into a tablet computer. The third member of the team did the running commentary for the other team. Other team members noted the substitutions. In hockey a player may be substituted many times during a game - at this level there are some 100 such substitutions during the 70 minutes of the game. The data was fed by live datastream to the match commentators.

During the Games we managed to see most of the teams

Our Olympic Experience - around the Park

We have just returned from the London Olympics where we were volunteers – called “Gamesmakers”. 

Our specific role was in the Hockey events. We were sports statisticians – this meant that we were collecting match statistics for the matches in both the Men's and Women's competitions - % possession, shots on goal etc.

In this and the next four blog entries I’ll aim to give a flavour of our Olympic experience – around the Olympic Park; then specifically at hockey’s Riverbank Stadium; and more generally around London.

This is the Olympic Stadium - home to the Athletics

The Orbit

The multi-coloured carpet outside the Olympic Stadium

The Copper Box - home to the early part of the Handball competition

The Basketball Arena - the Handball moved here for the finals ...

... and we managed to see the France v Spain quarter final. France won 23-22 and this is France about to score the winning goal with one second to go!

This is the Velodrome - affectionately nicknamed the "Pringle"

This is the BBC Sports studio - on top of all the blue boxes

Around the Park there was music on all the time ...

... sometimes it was more impromptu

This was Park Live - where spectators could view a variety of events on the big screen. This was a very popular venue, especially in the second week of the Games

Gloriana barge

Around the garden areas

This is a massive mirror - sponsored by BP - lots of people took photos of themselves in the mirror, taking photos of themselves ... and we were two such folk!

The hockey stadium - Riverbank Arena