London Pride

July 24, 2012

I know I’d be excited about watching this year’s Olympics no matter what. After all, I’ve been watching them about as long as I can remember watching sports period; the first two sporting events I have any recollection of seeing on TV are parts of the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta and the first half of Super Bowl XXXI respectively. But this year, with the Games coming to London in just three days, there will definitely be an extra special thrill to the Games that comes from seeing them held in the same city where I just spent almost four months studying abroad, a city I came to love dearly during my short time there.

That’s not to say that everybody living in London itself is as excited about the Games or even all that happy about their presence and they actually do have some fairly valid reasons for that. Huge amounts of security, some of it mismanaged, as in the G4S scandal, and some of it in the form of missiles placed on top of apartment buildings, overbearing laws about Olympic sponsors and trademarks, the delay the Olympics will place on the London Underground repairs, huge increases in traffic and congestion, the use of funds from the National Lottery and the British government budget for the Games at a time of economic hardship, the rapidly rising real estate prices in the neighborhood of Stratford, where the Olympic Village is located….All of these factors have dampened the appeal of the world’s most popular athletics festival coming to the shores of the Thames River.

But the things that make London so wonderful, special and dare I say it, unique are things that cannot be crushed by these setbacks any more than they could by the Great Fire of 1666 or the plague or the Blitz or the riots of Summer 2011 or any other challenge the city has faced. London is enriched by its cultural resources, its transportation system, which for all its faults is so much better than those of many American cities, its diverse ethnic communities, its food and its sheer beauty, both natural and man-made.

I always enjoy how the Olympics offers up some of the best sports action on the planet. But it will be even more enjoyable to see that action taking place in many of the parts of London I’ve come to know and love so well during my time there.

THIS is why I’m excited to see the Olympics. To see the world’s greatest runners compete at Stratford, one of the many parts of East London which has seen its fair share of urban decline and gentrification. To see volleyball at Earl’s Court, a wonderful venue located one Tube stop down from where I went to school, which somehow avoided demolition long enough to play a part in the Olympics.

To see one more week of incredible lawn tennis at the All-England Club in Wimbledon, the site that arguably did more to introduce lawn tennis to the world than any other place.

To see the utterly surreal spectacle of beach volleyball being played on the sands of the Horse Guards Parade, sands used more often to cushion the feet of the horses of the Queen’s own Horse Guards and just a particularly well aimed javelin’s throw away from 10 Downing Street.

To see the marathon runners racing down the Mall, past Trafalgar Square and eventually over Tower Bridge on their way to Buckingham Palace but not before running down the Victoria Embankment, a stretch of waterfront spanning from the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Bridge to the actually vividly red Blackfriars Bridge. The poet William Wordsworth once wrote of the view from Westminster Bridge:

“Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.”

He wasn’t kidding.

I’m excited to see the open-water swimming competition and the swimming portion of the triathlon in the waters of the Serpentine, the over 280-year old man-made lake that marks the boundary between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and is also one of the most beautiful spots in London.

I’m excited to see basketball in the O2 Arena, or as it will be known during the Games because O2 isn’t an Olympic sponsor, the “North Greenwich Arena”, a venue that somehow sat more or less vacant for five years before becoming London’s premier sports and mass concert venue and home to the British Music Experience, London’s answer to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I’m excited that the equestrian events will take place in Greenwich Park, one of the most picturesque spots in East London and that the shooting events will be held at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, formerly the site of the munitions factory whose workers helped found what eventually became Arsenal Football Club.

I’m excited that the archery events will take place at Lord’s Cricket Grounds, a place best described as the Cathedral of Cricket.

And finally, while most of the competition will take place throughout the UK, I’m excited that both the men’s and women’s finals for what we Americans call “soccer” and the British call “football” will take place at London’s own Wembley Stadium, a venue as near and dear to British hearts as Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium are to American baseball fans. Probably more so because of Wembley’s role as the home stadium for the entire English national team instead of any one particular club.

There are a lot of things my time in London taught me but the one that looks to be the most relevant over the next two weeks is this: sports are best enjoyed when you have a sense of where they’re played, who’s playing them and the people who choose to watch them play.