Today was my final Olympic event and it was the Men's 3m Springboard Diving Finals. The exciting things about this was 1. It was a medals round and 2. It was in the evening so I didn't have to be up at the butt crack of dawn to get there. Because Monday had been so tiring, I allowed myself to sleep in, which was very nice. I got ready and around 2:30 I headed into the Reading Train Station to get back to London.
I decided to take a detour to the Olympic Park stopping at Hyde Park. I didn't have much of a plan, just decided to walk around some as I'd only seen Horse Guard Parade and the Olympic Park in London and wanted to see a bit more. Eventually I headed into the Olympic Park via the Stratford Gate which was the busier gate. I didn't leave myself as much time since I knew how well the previous day had gone. Thankfully I was right, and Security and everything was very quick. I got to the Aquatics center and into my seat with about 30 min before the event. This time in the arena I was sitting my more Americans than I had at any other event...so there were a few more cheers in my area for Troy Dumais the USA Diver in the Finals. My seats were pretty high up, but I was on the side of the arena of the diving and the side of the springboards vs. the platforms. I've had good luck with my "cheap" seats.
The Diving event was good. I didn't totally know how it went, but I had a good idea. It's 6 rounds of dives with each one getting judged by 7 judges. The top 2 and bottom 2 scores are dropped and the middle 3 are added together and then multiplied by the degree of difficulty. There were 12 Divers representing 11 Nations. China had two divers and they were favored some. The event took a little over an hour and by the end there were about 3 divers that it was really between...the scores were divided such that it was easy to see who had a chance. Troy, the USA diver did well, ending the first round in 1st, but eventually finished 5th. It came down to the Russian and the Chinese Divers. They were all very good, but the Russian was very good and at the end, squeaked out a victory. The Chinese guy who was favored was crushed.
Next came the Medal's Ceremony. I really enjoyed this, despite there not being an American on the stand. It was really neat to see each person be awarded their Gold/Silver/Bronze Medal. Then watching them as they rose the flags and sang the Russian National Anthem. Just really neat thing to experience and I'm glad I was able to see it!
Day 14 - Wednesday August 8th
Well today has little of excitement in it, but I greatly enjoyed it. I finally took, after 2 weeks a down day. I just slept in and relaxed. Claire, Chris and I went out for dinner and had a good time chatting. Tomorrow I'm heading back into London to see some friends, should be a busy afternoon/evening.
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