Olympics Adveture: The Judo
The day after my football adventure at Wembley I had a single ticket to see judo. I know jack squat about judo, so I spent the morning watching it on TV and trying to understand. What I eventually figured out was that each weight class takes up 1 day of competition. In the morning there are 32 teams that compete in a knockout setting, then those winners compete in a second tier of knockouts against a new set of 16 teams (presumably the top-ranked 16). This determines which teams go on to compete in the afternoon for the medal matches. Each fight is only 5 minutes long, and they have 2 mats at a time (I think), so this part all goes pretty fast.
The main reason I cared about all this was because there was 1 Latvian competing in that day's competition, and it is my best chance for actually seeing a Latvian competitor in person. I brought a Latvian hockey jersey and a little Latvian flag in hopes of showing up on the jumbotron and international TV, and mostly in hopes of catching the Latvian's attention so I could schmooze with him and get him to sneak me into the Olympic Village. I made sure to wake up in time to watch his first fight. According to the TV, there were a couple fights to go before his appearance, so I went to the bathroom. When I came back 1 minute later, his fight was over. I guess he'd flipped the dude on the very first play ad insta-won. Hooray! Round 2 was very exciting. He was fighting a German, and they were super evenly-matched. By the ed of the 5 minutes they were scoreless, so they went into Golden Score (essentially overtime, though if you reach the end of overtime the 3 refs basically just vote on who they think seemed to be the best). The Latvian got flipped right at the beginning of the Golden Scoring, so that's it- he's out. No more Latvian. The German went on to eventually win bronze, BTW.
Well crap. I decided to wear my jersey anyway, since I brought it all the way out here anyway. Judo was happening in a big huge building called the Excel Center that hosts like 5 or 6 separate events, so I thought maybe I'll at least run into other Latvians and can bond. Or maybe the Latvian dude was sticking around to watch the finals. The Excel center was slightly tough to get to because it's off of the DLR, which is kinda sorta part of the Tube system but makes significantly less sense. It's like a grid instead of straight lines, and the route to a place and back from a place are not necessarily the same (or at least so it seemed to me). I for some reason assumed it was located inside the Olympic Park, so this was going to be my chance to check that out, but turns out it's not in there. There went yet another plan for sneaking into the Olympic Village (namely, just hang around outside and beg people to let me in). The Excel Center is MASSIVE. Maybe it's the layout, but it felt like the biggest building ever. Like airport scale massiveness. It hosts wrestling, weightlifting, judo, table tennis, and.. I think fencing? And maybe something else? Each sport gets it's own mini stadium inside the building, so you still have to walk down a mega huge corridor for like 10 minutes just to reach your event. The crowds were fun to watch, and I came to the conclusion that Dutch fans tend to be the most enthusiastic overall. They're always decked out to the nines in their crazy orange outfits, and they're jovially boisterous and full of cheers, songs, and smiles.
My judo seats were not as good as I had hoped. I was wedged into a corner kinda behind the scoreboard (if anyone has ever wondered what the back of a scoreboard looks like, I have pictures) in really uncomfortable seats. I somehow wound up with Americans all around me to the left and front so also seemed to have no clue how the sport worked. To my right was a very loud excited group of Frech kids wearing T-shirts in support of one of the French fighers (she eventually won bronze). The dude in front of me was pissing me off because he kept standing up for every second of non-fighting time, totally blocking my view of the cool stuff you don't get to fully see on TV, like the fighters hugging their coaches or one another or jumping into the stands, etc. This leads to probably the lowlight of the Olympic Spirit for me thus far. A surly load Brit sitting behind me screamed out-
-So... I had three detailed paragraphs written out here, and just when I went to click on publish, my browser freaked out and I lost them all. I dont'have the mental energy to completely rewrite them, so here are the main points in bullet form (which is probably more interesting anyway):
1. A fight almost broke out between a big surly British guy sitting behind me who wanted everyone to sit down and stop blocking his view, and an arrogant young Frenh guy who didn't want to be told what to do.
2. I had a tough time getting into the beginning of the matches due to the far away seats and the fact that I don't really know the sport. Plus, except for when they flip, judo can be quite boring, with lots of hand slapping resembling the start of the fight from Bridget Jones.
3. Once we hit the actual final medal games, stuff started really picking up and I got into it.
4. Judo gives out two bronze medals instead of one.
5. The German who beat out my Latvian in the morning ended up winning bronze, and he was super ecstatic and was riding around on his coaches shoulders.
6. The highlight was watching USA vs BG in the women's gold match since those are 2 of the 3 teams I came to the Olympics to support. The fun thing is I was wearing my Latvia jersey while watching the other two duke it out.
7. USA got gold. USA! USA!
8. Apparently the Prime Minister was there to congratulate the GB chick on her silver medal, but I totally missed that whole bit and only heard about it afterwards when I overheard some chick on the tube talking about it. I blame my crappy seat.
9. Russia won the gold in men's, which wouldn't really be worth noting except that Putin was there in person to congratulate his big winner. The congratulating happened right under my seats, so I got a crazy view of this dude's bald spot as they posed in front of the press. Holy crap. When I told friend later that I'd seen this and that Russia won gold, he commented (only partially joking) that the dude probably HAD to win because there was a sniper on him the whole time, and whoever won silver was given 2 million bucks to throw the match. Spooky stuff.
10. I stuck around for the women's medal ceremony, which was underwhelming since, honestly, I just really wanted to get out of my cramped little corner and beat the crowd so I could move on to Oxford that day. So I stuck around for the Star Spangled Banner, then snuck out before the men's ceremony so I wouldn't have to stand around in my Latvia jersey while singing the Russian anthem with Putin. File that last sentence under "Things I never thought I would say."
The main reason I cared about all this was because there was 1 Latvian competing in that day's competition, and it is my best chance for actually seeing a Latvian competitor in person. I brought a Latvian hockey jersey and a little Latvian flag in hopes of showing up on the jumbotron and international TV, and mostly in hopes of catching the Latvian's attention so I could schmooze with him and get him to sneak me into the Olympic Village. I made sure to wake up in time to watch his first fight. According to the TV, there were a couple fights to go before his appearance, so I went to the bathroom. When I came back 1 minute later, his fight was over. I guess he'd flipped the dude on the very first play ad insta-won. Hooray! Round 2 was very exciting. He was fighting a German, and they were super evenly-matched. By the ed of the 5 minutes they were scoreless, so they went into Golden Score (essentially overtime, though if you reach the end of overtime the 3 refs basically just vote on who they think seemed to be the best). The Latvian got flipped right at the beginning of the Golden Scoring, so that's it- he's out. No more Latvian. The German went on to eventually win bronze, BTW.
Well crap. I decided to wear my jersey anyway, since I brought it all the way out here anyway. Judo was happening in a big huge building called the Excel Center that hosts like 5 or 6 separate events, so I thought maybe I'll at least run into other Latvians and can bond. Or maybe the Latvian dude was sticking around to watch the finals. The Excel center was slightly tough to get to because it's off of the DLR, which is kinda sorta part of the Tube system but makes significantly less sense. It's like a grid instead of straight lines, and the route to a place and back from a place are not necessarily the same (or at least so it seemed to me). I for some reason assumed it was located inside the Olympic Park, so this was going to be my chance to check that out, but turns out it's not in there. There went yet another plan for sneaking into the Olympic Village (namely, just hang around outside and beg people to let me in). The Excel Center is MASSIVE. Maybe it's the layout, but it felt like the biggest building ever. Like airport scale massiveness. It hosts wrestling, weightlifting, judo, table tennis, and.. I think fencing? And maybe something else? Each sport gets it's own mini stadium inside the building, so you still have to walk down a mega huge corridor for like 10 minutes just to reach your event. The crowds were fun to watch, and I came to the conclusion that Dutch fans tend to be the most enthusiastic overall. They're always decked out to the nines in their crazy orange outfits, and they're jovially boisterous and full of cheers, songs, and smiles.
My judo seats were not as good as I had hoped. I was wedged into a corner kinda behind the scoreboard (if anyone has ever wondered what the back of a scoreboard looks like, I have pictures) in really uncomfortable seats. I somehow wound up with Americans all around me to the left and front so also seemed to have no clue how the sport worked. To my right was a very loud excited group of Frech kids wearing T-shirts in support of one of the French fighers (she eventually won bronze). The dude in front of me was pissing me off because he kept standing up for every second of non-fighting time, totally blocking my view of the cool stuff you don't get to fully see on TV, like the fighters hugging their coaches or one another or jumping into the stands, etc. This leads to probably the lowlight of the Olympic Spirit for me thus far. A surly load Brit sitting behind me screamed out-
-So... I had three detailed paragraphs written out here, and just when I went to click on publish, my browser freaked out and I lost them all. I dont'have the mental energy to completely rewrite them, so here are the main points in bullet form (which is probably more interesting anyway):
1. A fight almost broke out between a big surly British guy sitting behind me who wanted everyone to sit down and stop blocking his view, and an arrogant young Frenh guy who didn't want to be told what to do.
2. I had a tough time getting into the beginning of the matches due to the far away seats and the fact that I don't really know the sport. Plus, except for when they flip, judo can be quite boring, with lots of hand slapping resembling the start of the fight from Bridget Jones.
3. Once we hit the actual final medal games, stuff started really picking up and I got into it.
4. Judo gives out two bronze medals instead of one.
5. The German who beat out my Latvian in the morning ended up winning bronze, and he was super ecstatic and was riding around on his coaches shoulders.
6. The highlight was watching USA vs BG in the women's gold match since those are 2 of the 3 teams I came to the Olympics to support. The fun thing is I was wearing my Latvia jersey while watching the other two duke it out.
7. USA got gold. USA! USA!
8. Apparently the Prime Minister was there to congratulate the GB chick on her silver medal, but I totally missed that whole bit and only heard about it afterwards when I overheard some chick on the tube talking about it. I blame my crappy seat.
9. Russia won the gold in men's, which wouldn't really be worth noting except that Putin was there in person to congratulate his big winner. The congratulating happened right under my seats, so I got a crazy view of this dude's bald spot as they posed in front of the press. Holy crap. When I told friend later that I'd seen this and that Russia won gold, he commented (only partially joking) that the dude probably HAD to win because there was a sniper on him the whole time, and whoever won silver was given 2 million bucks to throw the match. Spooky stuff.
10. I stuck around for the women's medal ceremony, which was underwhelming since, honestly, I just really wanted to get out of my cramped little corner and beat the crowd so I could move on to Oxford that day. So I stuck around for the Star Spangled Banner, then snuck out before the men's ceremony so I wouldn't have to stand around in my Latvia jersey while singing the Russian anthem with Putin. File that last sentence under "Things I never thought I would say."