Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball
It's a bit late, but I figured I should finish off my posts about going to the Olympics with my trip to see the medal matches for the women's wheelchair basketball, held at the North Greenwich Arena (as opposed to the Basketball Arena which was hosting the Rugby).
I love the Olympic park but The Dome made a very nice change, we got there and cleared security with plenty of time and had a nice meal that didn't involve McDonalds or takeaway containers! It also made a pleasant change that we were on the end of a row, and near an entrance so we could actually come and go easily. Mind you, leaving the venue was less easy and involved an awful lot of slow shuffling in queues.
Just for a change I actually mostly understood the rules of the game and could follow the action, although I'm still hazy on what counts as a foul. It was clearer who was playing 'well' and who were not which made the whole thing a lot more entertaining. The two matches we saw were the bronze medal play-off between Netherlands and USA which the Netherlands really dominated to a 71-47 win. The second match was the battle for gold, a more closely fought battle with Germany edging out Australia 58-44.
Watching the sport live was equal parts great and irritating, the crowds shouting for the teams made a great atmosphere, but the repetitive chants did get somewhat tiresome. Also, every time there was a break in play, either between quarters or for timeouts a deeply irritating guy came out to rile the crowd up and get them to do dances and other stupid things that rather made me want to kill people.
