Today we are off to Men's team handball at the Olympic stadium complex. The travel guides say that we should plan on getting to the Olympic stadium two hours before our event. Factor in the estimated 40 minute ride on the Underground (subway) and we would have to leave at 6:55 am for our 9:30am event. We also need to squeeze showers and breakfast in here somewhere. We decide that these time estimates are really conservative and will get up at 6am to leave the hotel at 7am.
Each event ticket comes with a ticket that gets you on the Underground for free. We get to London Bridge station in a few minutes and get right onto a train. It is already pretty well packed so we have to stand. I give away a couple pins to a pair of kids standing near us. This serves a dual purpose - I get to make someone happy and it decreases the load that I am carrying around.
We get to Stratford station and follow the crowd toward the stadium. The first thing we see is the huge new Westfield Mall. I had thought that we would be forced through this Mall to get into the park, but we just walk by the entrance. The organizers clearly spent a lot of effort on moving the crowds because even though there are a lot of people, the lines move quite quickly. Everywhere we look, there are volunteers welcoming us and being "perky".
We get to the security line and the bobby (policeman) looks at my vest covered with pins and says you can't go through the metal detectors wearing that. I tell him "no worries, we've done this many times" and strip off the vest, backpack and hat in a few seconds and put them into trays going through the metal detector. He asks whether I would like to make a donation to his pin box sitting nearby. I put 3 or 4 in for his crew.
It is only a little after 8am when we get through security so we are way ahead of schedule. This is good, because there are a lot of people going in the same direction. Here is the view:
The Olympic stadium is directly in front of us. The weirdly twisting thing on the left is the Orbit. I had thought that this was a roller coaster, but it appears to be a sort of observation platform. And everywhere there are people. This complex houses seven different stadiums so there are a lot of people here at any given time.
The team handball stadium is called the Copper Box. The signs say that we have a 20 minute walk to the stadium and we have some time for sightseeing along the way. One of the royal barges is parked in the stream next to the stadium complex:
After a couple wrong turns, we arrive at the Copper Box:
It is called the Copper Box because the stadium is clad with huge Copper sheets. It reminds us of the Basketball stadium in Beijing. Inside, it is much smaller than the Basketball stadium; holding about 7,000 people. We have great seats for this event in the 3rd row on one of the goal lines. The volunteer that is helping people find their seats comments on my pin vest and I explain that this is our 11th Olympics. I tell him that I hate to see volunteers without pins and hand him one. He asks are pins an important part of the Olympics. I explain that to me, pins are the competition for the spectators, but it worries me that we are already at Olympic Day 8 and this volunteer is still clueless about Olympic pins. This makes it much less likely that many spectators will get hooked before the Games ends in 8 days.
Team handball is a weird sort of hybrid with elements of football (soccer), rugby and basketball. There are six players and a goalkeeper on each team. The ball is slightly smaller than a basketball and shaped more or less like a football (soccer ball). The goals are shaped like small football (soccer) goals. Surrounding each goal is a 7 meter semi-circle. The shooters have to leave the ground before entering this circle:
Once a player receives a pass, they can run no more than 3 steps before they either have to bounce the ball off the ground or pass to someone else. Bouncing the ball off the ground is somewhat problematic. This is because the players hands and the ball are coated with sticky stuff to keep the ball from slipping out of their hands. So when they bounce the ball off the ground, it makes a sort of splat sound. The ball is so sticky that if it rolls on the ground, it rapidly slows down and comes to a stop.
The first match of the day is between Great Britain and the African champions from Tunisia. Unlike most of the European nations, handball is not very popular in Great Britain. In fact, the only reason that they have a team is because the home nation automatically qualifies for the Olympics. The scoreboard indicates that both teams have yet to win a game; both are 0-3. Great Britain has a goal differential of -62 while Tunisia has a goal differential of -23 so it is likely that this is the only chance that either team has for a win.
As you can expect, almost everyone is rooting for Team GB. Here is one of the few exceptions:
The second match is Korea versus Serbia. Both of these teams are stronger than either Great Britain or Tunisia, but neither of them have won a match yet. Korea has a 39 year old guy named Yoon who has scored more than 2,000 goals in international competition, but he does not seem to have a prime role on this team. Here are a couple of the pictures that I took:
The match stays close throughout. The Koreans have five very good scorers, but the Serbians have nine players score and it is this balance that helps the Serbians win 28-22.
After the match, we go looking for something to eat. We settle for a long building with a variety of sandwiches laid out on shelves similar to a supermarket. You pick what you want and join a giant queue (line) to the till (cashiers) to pay. We have plenty of time so we decide to explore Olympic park. We find the only two story tall McDonalds that we've ever seen:
Next to the McDonalds is the Olympic Superstore. Outside the Superstore is the queue from hell. We ask one of the volunteers how long from the end of the line. He said that he would make a prediction, but was worried that the people he tells would come back and lynch him. We decide to give it a try figuring we can always bail out if the time is ridiculous. The organizers apparently have learned something from Disney because the line really moves fast. Sean gets a gold lame' Wenlock to add to his Olympic mascot collection and I buy a few pins (like I need any more!) and we decide to return for clothes.
Sean is getting antsy, but we decide to walk over and see whether we can climb up (or down) the Orbits tower. First, we have to find the queue, which is difficult when there are so many people about. We finally find the queue. Sean and I stand in the queue while Beth goes to find out whether we have to have preregistered to go up. She comes back and tells us that we have to already have tickets. Oh well, perhaps another day.
The most amazing thing to me was that in five hours walking around wearing a vest and hat covered with Olympic pins, I ran into exactly one person who was actively looking for pins - and he was also from California. In side the Superstore, I noticed that the price for each pin was 7 pounds (US$11-12). This is a lot for a place where the economy is not very good and may explain why so few people are wearing any Olympic pins.
The organizers have been trying to get people to exit the park through the West Ham station. That might be find if you were getting on a different Underground line into London, but since we have to be on the Jubilee line that comes from Stratford, walking to West Ham would just mean we'd be trying to get onto a train that had already been completely packed at Stratford. We go to Stratford station and find no problems. A train is just leaving when we walk into the station and another one pulls up in 2-3 minutes. We are able to get seats for the ride back to London Bridge station.
We make it home in time to watch the Great Britain women's pursuit track cycling team win the gold record and set the world record on all six of their races. The riders all say that the huge support that they get from the local fans makes all of difference. This is why the host nation always wins many more medals than their average.
Our lunch was fairly late so we don't want a big dinner. We end up at a Japanese restaurant. The selection is pretty limited, but the katsu and teriyaki that they have is very good.
The other reason for the small dinner is to get back to watch Athletics (Track & Field) on TV. We have been following the exploits of Team GB's Jessica Ennis who has been the face of the London Olympics for the last four years. Some people would fold under the pressure, but Jessica seems to thrive on it. She started out the heptathlon yesterday by running the fastest 110m hurdles ever by a heptathlete. In fact, it is so fast that it would have won the 110m gold medal in Beijing! Jessica sets personal best's in three of the first six events giving her a huge lead going into the last event, the 800m. All she had to do was stay close to her nearest competitor, Russia's Tatyana Chernova to win the gold medal. But like a true champion, she pushed through the pain to win the 800m.
The other event that got our blood pumping was the men's 10,000m. Of course, all of Britain wanted Mo Farah to win. In case you hadn't noticed, runners from East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea) are pretty good at distance races. In fact, the last time that an African did not win the men's 10,000m was 1984 when Alberto Cova from Italy won. But for the first time in dog years, the US has a very good distance runner, Galen Rupp. Galen and Mo, who both train under former Olympic marathon champion Alberto Salazar, hit the afterburners in the last half lap and manage to finish 1-2 ahead of two brothers from Ethiopia. Rupp's silver medal is the best US performance since Billy Mills won the 10,000m gold medal in Tokyo in 1964!
Steps for the day: 15,200
When I came upon this sport on TV, I had NO idea what it was. Seemed like some merge between water polo on land, basketball, football and soccer. Finally found out that it was team handball and since I knew you had tickets to it, I spent the rest of the game looking for you!
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