With great excitement I donned my uniform I set out from my friends house to Uxbridge tube station to travel to my first Olympics shift on Saturday 27th July. Dawn was just breaking, and from a house just down the road out came another gamesmaker, well, who else would be about at 4:30am on a saturday?! Londoners dot talk to strangers though, right? Wrong! Rob and I had a great chat on the way to the station, he was heading to Lords for the archery, lucky enough to be working on the Olympics all of week 1, And the proud owner of stadium tickets for week 2!
I arrived at the station BEFORE the driver of the first train out of there, in fact he too stopped and had a chat with me on his way to the cab to start his shift. The train was deserted. I haven't ever been on a tube train where I was the only one! So I took a photo!
On the Sunday (the women's race) even though I was able to catch a slightly later 6am tube train, I still arrived before Metro, the newspaper had been delivered to the station.
I wasn't able to get one till I arrived at Hyde Park tube station.
At check in in Hyde Park, we collected our lunch, (and several free coffees!) before we walked to our bus stop, to get bussed out onto the course ready for action. It made me feel very important being on a bus full with gamesmakers travelling through a road block and down closed roads!
Fulham was our destination, and we we're divided into crossing teams. Ours was situated between two bends (not ideal) but right outside a cafe, subway, and newsagents, and not far from cafe Nero and a bar that had several live TV feeds showing. Perfect!
The G4 staff who were in control of crowd management 'left us to deal with it' but the support from the police was great. I didn't know that the police were drafted in from all over the country, just on our patch we chatted to police from Greater Manchester, London, Norfolk and Cumbria! They said they were down for the week. It is just mind boggling the sheer amount of people it takes to make an Olympic Games happen. 1700 Gamesmakers alone, marshalling this one event!
The sun shone (mostly!) on the men's race, but unfortunately the women faced heavy rain and thunder storms. This didn't deter the crowds, who were 5 or six deep in places in anticipation of the men coming through.
People's were on rooftops, on top of phone boxes in bikinis, hanging out of upper floor windows, all trying to get a vantage point for their own photographic piece of history. Locals camped out at the barriers with stools and picnics, it was a truly incredible atmosphere. People from literally all over the world were there, many people wanting photos with us the Gamesmakers, making us feel like mini superstars!
The position we were at was 5 minutes from the start / finish line. This meant that the peloton paraded past on their way out, then the return passing was quite different as they prepared for the finish!
The police out riders were also getting in on the superstar feeling, high 5ing the crowds and playing tunes with their sirens as they passed, what seemed like thousands of times!
Of course, the start of the women's race was quite different, as a Brazilian had already made a break away in the opening kilometres, passing us solo with the peloton close behind. We knew she would not make it to the London outskirts before she was caught again!
The crowd waited in expectation for the men to return, well most of them! The favourite questions of the weekend were 'so, what's happening here then?' I was asked, while wearing London 2012 uniform and standing next to a matching barrier!
In the lull between out and return, (a good few hours) I was asked 'so, when are the runners expected?' to which I replied 'you mean cyclists?!'
It was hard to pick out the GB kit with it being only blue and white, but we knew immediately that there were no GB men in the break away lead back as they passed us in Fulham preparing for their sprint finish. The women's story was quite different and they returned to a wall of noise, Lizzie Armistead in the lead three and almost guaranteed a medal as they sprinted past us preparing for the finish. From under my rain poncho I had the TV coverage on via 3G to my iPhone, with the crowd peering over my shoulder to see, and listening intently. From the other side of the crossing they yelled 'what's happening?!' and I shouted across minute by minute updates, with a HUGE roar as I reported that Lizzie had got a silver, and GB's first medal in the London Olympics! The policeman standing nearby got on his radio immediately to report the good news across the police force!
It's a shame then, that in today's Evening Standard Lizzie Armistead says that although she carries her medal around with her everywhere, no one knows who she is.
Armistead has brought up the issue of media coverage in women's cycling in her recent press interviews. She says with 300m to go she had a sudden thought 'I could be Olympic champion!'
What would have happened otherwise? Who knows, but she will be hunting down that Gold in Rio for sure!
Shame I won't be a Gamesmaker there too, eh? ;)
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