I’ve been rude about the Olympic Park before now, earlier in the year I took the family to a warm up event which turned out to be an exercise in lock down, it rained, we saw little and we got cold. I and most of the people I spoke to at the time saw the Park as over securitized and the Olympic spirit some way off.

Yesterday we spent a day at the Park and I’m happy to say I could not have been more wrong, we lay on grass lawns beside wild flowers watching sporting endeavour on the big screen. We sat in disbelief as Cav and the boys got outwitted by a Kazerbyjani in the men’s road race and then applauded with thousands of others despite our disappointment. We laughed with the volunteers and readily undertook security from the soldiers who were giving up their leave to make this work.

I realised that my moaning was exactly what the Olympic Spirit was not about!

We sat in the magnificent Copperbox arena and watched a game I’d never seen before, handball. Two great matches played with mean ferocity resulting in narrow victories. The only sadness banks of empty seats reserved for some fictional VIP‘s who never showed. How good it would be for these seats to be re-allocated on the day via the ticket box on site.

But that’s a small moan. Today we are off to Lords to see the woman’s archery. We probably won’t see a Brit, we didn’t see a live Brit yesterday. It doesn’t matter, this is not a partisan event anymore and I’m going to forget all about the medal table. What is much more important is that the Olympics are here , are magnificent and are as well organised and wonderfully fun as the brilliant opening ceremony.

Happy days indeed!

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