London 2012 Olympic Games, one year on.

[The Natural]

A year ago today, the London 2012 Olympic Games started. Over the next three days, the London Anniversary Games will take place to mark it.

 

One year on, I wanted to look back on the best moments of London 2012 and I’d like to see yours. Here are mine:

 

Three Track and Field Gold’s for Team GB on Super Saturday in less than an hour: Jessica Ennis in the Hepthalon, Greg Rutherford in the Long Jump and Mo Farah in the 10,000m.

 

Bradley Wiggins wins the Individual Olympic Cycling Time Trial to go with winning the Tour de France shortly before the start of London 2012. Wiggins was the first Briton to do the latter, now joined by Chris Froome who won it this year.

 

Gemma Gibbons wins Team GB’s first Olympic Judo media since Sydney 2000, a Silver Medal. Gibbons beat the World Champion in the semi-final with a Golden Score Ippon. Gemma’s crying and looking up to the sky mouthing “I love you Mum”. Gibbon’s Mum passed away from Leukemia who introduced her to Judo. Gibbons’s celebration moved me then and still does now.

 

Andy Murray beating Roger Federer with ease winning the Gold medal in the Tennis Men’s Singles Final. Murray also won a Silver Medal with Laura Robson.

 

One day after Gemma Gibbons Silver Medal win, Karina Bryant picked up a second Judo medal for Team GB, a Bronze.

 

David Rudisha winning the 800m and breaking the World Record while doing so.

 

After three successive Silver medals, rower Katherine Grainger wins Gold with Anna Watkins.

[Red is Dead]

Going to the olympic park to watch the hockey. It was a proper party atmosphere, even if the weather was shocking. There was real consternation that there would have been some real issues with crime, based upon the area of london in which the games were being held. Not a whiff of it, everyone was just having a damn good time.

 

Going to earls court to watch the volleyball mens matches. Such good fun to sit there and watch top athletes from USA, australia, Italy and russia play two five set matches.

 

Womens football final was okay - but i couldnt see much from where we were.

 

I vividly remember watching the opening ceremony and feeling incredibly proud. The british media were shitting themselves over the preceding weeks and months thinking danny boyle would shit the bed with the ceremony.

 

He killed it. It was just a stunning ceremony. He nailed his flag to the mast with the love for the NHS. 

 

The bolt fist bump to his lane "second" was an awesome personal moment as well.

 

And super saturday - woof. Just beautiful stuff. 

[The Natural]

Fuck I can't believe I forgot to mention the opening ceremony, that was great. Good post, Red is Dead.

[Red is Dead]

Opening ceremony was miles better than the closing one. 

 

Just leaps and bounds better.

[MarcosLoura]

These dudes.

 

[Basara]

I was lucky enough to get tickets to a fair amount of Olympic and Paralympic events. Wasn't an easy process with the initial ticket 'lottery' But we were able to snag some Wrestling tickets and Paralympic closing Ceremony tickets. Picked up a holiday package from Thomas Cook for tickets to the Basketball and Trampolining and then over the course of the games, refreshing the website 1000 times and countless phone calls (the hold music still haunts my dreams) we got tickets to the 2nd Trampolining event and several Paralympic athletic and swimming events. A lot of money spent on tickets, travel, hotels and food over 5-6 week period but all well worth it.

 

A quick edit for the park and planning as a whole: The country gets a lot of stick for bad transport, planning and what not but i cant say a bad thing about how any of this went down. Every person working there, volunteering or just going to watch events, everyone was approachable and genuinely having a good time and enjoying what they were doing. Transport across London has never been easier, be it the underground or trains to and from London.

 

We didn't see any of the big British moments like Super Saturday or Murrays big win but that didn't take anything away from the events we did see, loved every second of it. A few favorite things:

 

Basketball, never been into it but what we got to see was insane. The actual matches were random, just depended on what was on on that day and we were lucky enough to get Team GB vs Spain were GB made some ridiculous comeback near the end and almost pulled out a victory, the place was going nuts. And in the second game the American team smashed the Olympic scoring record.

 

Trampolining, great fun. I actually do a spot of trampolining, and where i train we have coaches and people compete at a national level. So while its probably a random thing to go and watch to 90% of the population it was good getting to see it at this level.

 

Paralympic athletics and swimming. Amazing, we got to see several Team GB gold medal wins, its hard to describe the sound and atmosphere when something like that happens.

 

As for the anniversary games. We got tickets to yesterdays event and tomorrows. No 'Super Saturday' again but we got Usain Bolt in the 100m last night and holy crap, hes something special to see. The race was great, he got off to a bad start and for a split second you though he might actually lose, till he just blew everyone away at the end and made it look easy. Looking forward to watching Jonnie Peacock in the 100m at tomorrows event too.

[Somebloke01]

 

 

 Looking forward to watching Jonnie Peacock in the 100m at tomorrows event too.

 

Well holy crap, what a race that was. Alan Olivera breaking the world record (his won) by 0.2 of a second, crazy.

 

My fave parts of the olympics were definitely the 45 minutes of pure gold at the athletics but after that my favourite thing might have been the mixed disabilty relay swimming races at the paralympics which were crazy in working out who was ahead and were so much fun.

[Basara]

 

 

 

 Looking forward to watching Jonnie Peacock in the 100m at tomorrows event too.

 

Well holy crap, what a race that was. Alan Olivera breaking the world record (his won) by 0.2 of a second, crazy.

 

 

Just got back, that was pretty crazy. Place was going nuts, every bit as entertaining as Friday nights 100m. Oliveira and Browne both beat their respective world records, Jonnie Peacock did a person best beating his own previous world record and 7 out of the 9 runners did at least a season or personal best. Absolute beast of a race. Cant forget Richard Whitehead, Hannah Cockroft and David Weirs win to send the crowd home happy. They are just on another level.

[The Man Known as Dan]

I found the Ruta Meilutyte story last year, the Bulgarian by way of England 15 year old who came out of nowhere to win 100m Breaststroke gold. Just looked to see what she is up to, and the answer seems to be "becoming one of the best swimmers in the world".

[Domino_Not_Deuce]

The Olympics were great and fell right as I was unemployed, so the bitterness of losing a job was helped by me watching Handball in my pants for 2 weeks.