Olympic Diving

On August 5, we attended the women's springboard diving finals.  

We had prepared some signs to wave at the camera with the hope that we would be on TV.

Silly me thought our £90 seats would not be up in the rafters.  Bahahaha!  It wasn't the rafters, but it was a steep climb up to row 36.  At least our seats were in front of the diving pool.  Some folks were seated in front of the swimming pool - that stinks.  

I asked my husband why we didn't get the better seats.  We had posters to wave and the younger daughter longed for a couple seconds of airtime since she broke out the pencil, ruler and markers to help cheer on Team USA.  I quickly shut my trap when the husband told me the seats down closer to the action where I longed to sit were £400 each.  Sorry, diving folks, but I'm just not that much of a fan.  Gymnastics finals?  Now that would have been worth the big bucks for a ringside seat.

It was quite the trip to Olympic Park.  First, we drove to the commuter rail station in our town and took a ride to Waterloo.  Then we got on the tube (subway) and rode eight stops to the West Ham station.  Then we walked 20 minutes to get to the airport style security checks into the park.  Finally, we walked about another 10 minutes to the aquatics centre, the venue for diving right across from the stadium.

I had to include a pic of the ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture and observation tower on the Olympic grounds.  The locals have poked fun at this bit of whimsy that looks like some sort of amusement park rollercoaster that is caving in on itself.  

We decided to grab a bite to eat before the competition started at 7:00 pm, so here we are gnoshing on Mickey D's.

The aquatics centre was interesting - very modern architecture.  

As you can see, we were quite a way up from the pool, but at least we had big screens to catch all of the action.

Here are some shots of the two American divers that made it into the finals, ranked 7 and 8 of the 12 finalists competing that evening.

It was challenging to get a decent pic because we were so far away and I had the camera zoomed in all the way, so this is about as good as it gets with all of these factors at play.

But the family still enjoyed it, especially the suspense because at the end of 4 out of 5 rounds, one of the American ladies was ranked third. But then the fifth round squashed her bid for a medal.

As we were exiting the diving event around 8:30, we had a great view of Olympic stadium and heard cheers from the crowd as they watched track and field events in progress.