A golden day at the rowing

Jules flies the flag, originally uploaded by Racmol.

The alarm went off at 5.30am yesterday and we leapt into the shower before our babysitter arrived punctually at 6. Our timetabling was probably a bit on the paranoid side as we were in Slough waiting for the shuttle bus by 7am and arrived at the venue after a long walk through the Windsor race course just after 8.

We were greeted by armies of happy smiling volunteers and the happy smiling actual army, who performed the world's most efficient security check (take note Heathrow - it's really not that difficult!)

We made our way down to Lakeview Lodge, where there was a big woodchipped area at the edge of the rowing lake that people had set up their picnic blankets on. To get a little extra height, people had made little mounds out of the woodchips and were sitting on them like nesting penguins - I think Jules took a picture of them from the rear which I will share when we download it.

The website had gone on about healthy and delicious food being available at the venue. I did see that the coffee and donut stand had a porridge or granola option but the rest of the stands were fish and chips, hog roast, sausage in a bun and pulled pork. Delicious yes but I'm not so sure about the healthy part. And then there was this sign saying alcohol would only be available from 9.30am which seemed a bit of an arbitrary time to start drinking - not until after breakfast??

So after our healthy and delicious breakfast we made our way to our seats and then discovered the first two hours were full of the F to B finals i.e. sorting out how every boat in the competition ranked, all the way up from the bloke from Niger who finished 33rd out of 33 (to a massive cheer from the crowd) after taking up rowing three months ago.

Our seats were probably only 50m from the end of the course so we had a great view. It's a very strange spectator sport - you can't even see the boats until they're about 500m from the end.

And the rest is history - we cheered on our guys surrounded by cheering English people cheering 5 seconds behind us (ha!). Don't know which was more impressive - the distance that Bond and Murray won by or Mahe Drysdale's close finish.

Hoping to take Sofia and Willy in to watch a bit of the women's marathon tomorrow morning.