Great River Race 2012 Photos

Great River Race 2012

I've just spent a pleasant hour lying in the sun watching 200 or so boats of the Great River Race pass by Putney.

Hope everyone had a good time, in particular Chris from Rowing for Pleasure pulling well on Gladys, below:

London 2012: My Olympics and Paralympics

Now the Olympics and Paralympics are over its a good time to look back over this summer's posts and report on JP's London 2012, hopefully without using words like "journey":

• My first Olympic moment was watching the torch relay on the streets of south London
• I then soaked up the atmosphere on the tall ship Maja as it went underneath Tower Bridge the day before the opening ceremony
• The following day I watched the torch on its final journey (oops, sorry, it just slipped in there) on the Gloriana up the Thames
• Living in London I couldn't help notice all the preparations and take pride in the Olympics coming to our great city
• The Red Arrows roaring over London signalled the start of the stunning Olympic's Opening Ceremony
• The first weekend I saw the two cycle road races flashed over Putney Bridge, the men's with Wiggo on Saturday and the women on Sunday, winning one of Team GB's first medals.
• Of course my main interest was the sailing, watching online and on the web site
• Much better than either were the three trips down to Weymouth, sitting on the Nothe soaking up the great atmosphere as posted here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
• By then nearly everyone was getting Olympics fever so the official web site was melting as people tried to grab those last minute release of tickets
• I managed to get a ticket to see the Beach Volleyball where we were joined by some of Team GB's rowing medallists
• Medallists were beginning to appear everywhere, including Tom Slingsby with his Laser gold
• The Olympics even reached up to Nelson's hat
• There was a parallel cultural London 2012 with events including art installations (not all equally good)
• Across London there were the National Houses and I visited those of Brazil, France and Denmark
• The Olympic Closing Ceremony wasn't that great so I made up my own
• No problems with the moving and inspirational Paralympics's Opening Ceremony
• The cauldron was lit again in the Olympic Stadium as I saw when went to see the Paralympic's athletics
• I also managed to get a ticket to the amazing Paralympics Closing Ceremony
• Finally I was in the City for the parade of Olympic and Paralympic heros and then in Trafalgar Square for the Red Arrows fly by (below)

It's become a much repeated truism that the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were a once in a lifetime event.

For that reason I'm glad I didn't hold back, but enjoyed as much as I could of both the Olympics and Paralympics

Not available in the US

Suffering like so many over here from Olympic and Paralympic withdrawal symptoms I found myself wondering what other nations have made of this summer of sport.

There was good stuff in Australia and on Al Jazeera, but what about across the pond in America? What did it say, for example, in the NY Times article on the Paralympics Closing Ceremony?

....er.... where is that exactly? And is there really only a handful of blog posts about the whole Paralympics?

Now this isn't some local London derby, this is the second largest sporting event in the world.

I heard that NBC didn't show anything live and is condensing the whole Paralympics into a few extracts, but then this is the station that cut the tribute to the victims of the 7/7 attack from their broadcast of the Olympics Opening Ceremony (not cool guys).

But it does seem to me to be a shame and I've got to ask those American readers, what is going on?

Why so little coverage of the Paralympics in America?

London 2012: Paralympics Closing Ceremony Photos

London 2012: I was there

We are heartbroken, for it is finally over.

A moment in time, unrepeatable, uncapturable, unforgettable.

We thought it had finished after the Olympics but the Paralympics have been more than just an after-thought but an inspirational event, a demonstration of what humans are capable of.

Its changed how people see the disabled but also how Britain see's itself, a positive image of ourselves.

The weeks seemed to flash past, and the greater the event, the faster it seemed to pass. Last night's key moments were over far too soon; the great stadium thumping songs we could have sung all over again, to hear again 80,000 voices backed by a megawatt sound system.

The fireworks explosions images and sounds crescended again and again, saturating the mind, creating a sublime moment. Nothing you see on television compares to what it was like to be in there.

It was the final moment of the evening, and almost of the entire summer of sport.

Today there was the parade when a million Londoners crowded those ancient streets that go back to the Romans, streets where walked Samuel Pepys and William Shakespeare, to watch the modern heros make their way to Buckingham Palace.

The real ending was as it began, with a flyby, the Red Arrows streaking across the skies of London, their crackling roar causing all in Trafalgar Square to look upwards.

We will never forget the summer of London 2012 or the spirit of London 2012.

And I can say "I was there"

The Paralympics Closing Ceremony

Wow!!!

... more to come, tomorrow.

London Rowing Club - during and after the Olympics

Tomorrow evening's Paralympics closing ceremony will be the final hurrah of what today's Times called "the greatest summer since records began."

Now the buzz word is legacy and the question of how the huge positive energy of the last few weeks and months will be harnessed.

I've got gigabytes of photos to go through but two caught my eye. The one above is of the London Rowing Club during the games when it was host to the Serbian National Team.

Now those colours and shields have been taken down and replaced by this one:

Yup, rowers from here in Putney got gold and silver medals.

Hopefully this, and the success in all the other sports, will see clubs around the country go from strength to strength as new members are encouraged to follow in their hero's footsteps. 

Photos from the Paralympics

Racing for spectators

After yesterday's post on Extreme 40 sailing in Cardiff Baydog brought up that favourite hot potato of whether it was better in the days of ACC monohulls.

Well over the last few weeks at the Olympics and Cardiff I've watched Lasers, 49ers, Eliot class match racing and Extreme 40s fleet race so here's some ideas from on my experiences.

1) Doing is better than watching, but.....

You knew that anyhow, didn't you. It is better to be out there on the water than on land watching.

But that doesn't help, really. We complain that there isn't high enough exposure of sailing on (say) TV and that means people should watch it - and that means people should enjoy watching it.

Then top rank sailing is expensive and not everyone is a billionaire so that means sponsors and that means audiences.

Plus with an audience you've got more of a chance of some kid going "hey, that looks cool, I'd like to try that" which means sailing has a future. Going fast is cool, remember that.

Also not everyone sails equally well and its actually quite impressive to see the very best at any skill based endeavour showing how it should be done. Those on the Nothe watching Ben Ainslie do his thing must have had a treat (alas that wasn't one of the days I was down there).

2) It's hard to follow large fleets of small boats

Sorry Tillerman but those Laser races may have had Paul Goodison and Tom Slingsby in it but it was really hard to follow from the Nothe what was going on with so many boats at the top / bottom mark. Also each leg took its time so can't see that grabbing the attention deficit yoof of today (or so Sassi tells me).

By all means get schools into sailing and put kids on Lasers asap - great idea. But I can't see it building an audience of spectators.

3) Mono hull match racing is for purists

Not that there's anything wrong with that: of the classes I saw at the Nothe I've already said that Match racing was my favourite. With just two boats you could see clearly who was winning and it was a master class in tactics and sailing skills.

But you had to know at least something about the rules and why boats would all of a sudden dial up or down and be prepared to invest time enough for the upwind / downwind legs to play out.

4) Speed is impressive

Two quotes overheard last weekend from what sounded like a sailing novice: "wow!" and "this isn't what I expected it to be like!" - I'm assuming in a good way. Even the Volvo 70s when they raced in Portsmouth didn't get that reaction - though the 49ers were close.

Ok it wasn't ACC class (let alone Square Metre Rule classic yacht racing) but it did seem to get involved an audience outside the usual suspect (that's us I guess).

Sailing at these close quarters over short courses do need different skills to traditional racing but there are skills there; less chess player more tennis player.

In the face of the super fast catamarans of today no doubt McCoy would say "it's yacht racing JP, but not as we know it!"

But it is yacht racing, and it is getting an audience.

There is room out there on the water for all classes and the Extreme 40s deserves its chance to grab some spectators into the world of sailing.

Anyway that's enough of me - what do you think?

Extreme 40s at Cardiff - Race part 2

After the first half of the race (blogged yesterday) and having come back down towards the start the Extreme 40s fleet of 9 yachts had to do a couple of loops of the marks guestimated below on Google Earth:

It was basically round M1 to either M2 or M3, back to M1 and then either M2 or M3 again, back to M1 and a snappy dash to M5 before a handbrake turn in front of the quayside to zap back across the line.

If you look at the scale you can see that these speed machines were doing the legs in about 30 seconds, and there'd be some going up and others going down and a lot of OMG-ing and shit-ing as the skippers changed course and decided at the last second that M3 might be a safer bet than M2:

I must admit I did keep looking out for an almighty prang but the skippers kept their cool well.

The rewards of getting their first were even greater than normal as the boats could turn at speed, as shown perfectly here by Ernesto Bertarelli on Alinghi:

Later boats had to be more cautious and slow down, something that Extreme 40s don't like doing. In fact SAP stalled just above the mark and was really close to drifting back onto it:

After this it was time for a sprint to the final mark:

Then the line, points and in under 10 minutes do it all over again.

Very exciting to watch and must it be a total adrenaline rush blast to sail.

Extreme 40s at Cardiff - Race part 1

This is what starts looks like for the Extreme 40s, and we got to see 8 of them packed into three hours on Saturday afternoon.

The area to manoeuvre these rockets ships was remarkably small and with the wind gusting from 5 to 15 knots there were quite a few re-starts as boats surged across the line.

Then they'd zoom off downwind, windward hull flying high in a way that even the total non-sailor could appreciate:

Up at that end of the course there was a downwind / upwind pair of legs but as Cardiff Bay is under a nautical mile from end to end and these boats were at times doing 20 knots it wasn't long before they were screaming back down again, often hidden under clouds of spray:

Down by where the main crowd (including me) were waiting there were a pair of buoys that the fleet of 9 yachts had to choose which to go round, dodging those who had already gone round. It was all within a few metres of the shore and there really was no room spare.

Things were about to get interesting:

The Paralympics Flame

Woo hoo!!

Had a great day at the London 2012 Olympic stadium watching the Paralympics, amazing atmosphere and a gold medal for Team GB (paralympics) in the discus.

Woo hoo!!

Extreme 40s at Cardiff

I spent the afternoon in Cardiff watching the Extreme 40s - thrilling, fast, furious stuff.

More to come as go through the photo stack.