A unique series from British Athletics Supporters Club members on the Olympic Games, led by Richard Cooper, Sandra Hogben and Jane Ainsworth in the UK, and Philip Andrew, in Beijing

14th August 2008

Beijing

After a very efficient transit through Beijing’s airport, I arrive at my hotel.  I soon settle in and meet up with some old friends from BASC.  At about 8 o’clock we decide to go to a restaurant for some Peking Duck, but it is still pouring down with rain (we arrived in a massive thunderstorm with torrential rain; in my first 5 hours I guess we had about 3 inches), so taxis are hard to come by and it takes us a while to get near to it and then find it.  They close at 9pm so we can’t get in; no 24 hour city here.  We go over the road to a fast food dumpling bar and order far more than we could eat in three sessions, since we have no common language.  Still, it cost only 6 quid each, so no great loss.

A 25 minute walk back to the hotel through deserted and wet streets and into the lobby for a beer.  Bill appears from nowhere, as well as an athletics fan he follows the England cricket team He tells us that we have our first gold in the ladies road race and generally updates us on events.  Come midnight I retire to bed, content that I am amongst friends and back on the emotional roller coaster that is Team GB at the Olympics.

It is now Wednesday and the majority of the supporters have arrived.  Most are orientating themselves with trips to the Forbidden City, Tian a Mein square, Summer Palace etc.  We are near a local residential compound with local shops and restaurants; a very small proportion speaks a little English, so conversation is difficult!  However they are all very friendly and helpful.  The weather is much like England, except 10 degrees Celsius warmer and higher humidity.  Walking round has to be done at a gentle pace due to heat and humidity; no sign of any pollution except that some of the drains smell!  The best way to travel is by taxi, only 80 pence (metered and a receipt, no tips accepted) but needs pre-planning as no driver speaks English, so we have to ask the hotel’s reception to write out the destination in Chinese script.   Beijing is an enormous, modern city, with a combination of wide streets; I can’t believe how little traffic there is – it’s rather eerie.  When I was here 10 years ago the bulk of the traffic was pedal-powered, now it is less than in Holland.

Fans that have been here for a few days have taken in their respective second favourite sports of rowing, swimming, tennis, badminton etc as well as new, to us, sports such as handball and canoe slalom amongst others.  Well, the venues are impressive, while travel and security are not too bad.  Hotel to seat at the swimming took about an hour, but it was nearly three hours to the rowing.  Security is an issue here; bags have to pass through an X-ray machine before we go into the Metro and no drinks or food is allowed into any sports complex.  Mark, another of the large BASC contingent out here, fell foul of this rule on the main Olympic site by visiting the on-site souvenir shop after a morning session, only to have his souvenir mug (complete with box) confiscated when going into the evening session.  Such matters are best taken with good humour as it would be inconceivable to make someone lose face.

Keeping up with what is happening is getting more difficult as the flow of new arrivals with UK newspapers has almost stopped and the local papers have very little in English; what there is mostly concerns Chinese athletes.  So far there have been no event programmes nor results sheets. How spoilt we are by Fast track (I never thought I would say that!).  So we rely totally on word of mouth and finding an internet shop/cafe (there are a few) and looking at the BBC and BOA websites.

The athletics fans are reminiscing, over the odd glass of beer, about past Olympics and fine performances and looking forward to Friday with Kelly and Sunday’s marathon.

Best Wishes

Philip