Olympic Handball

I'd managed to ignore most of the build up to the olympics (beyond dreading what it was going to do the transport system) and not waste hours online trying to get a lottery-allocated ticket to the Olympic Stadium. So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself on the day after the opening ceremonies in the Olympic park, early on a Saturday morning in a Handball arena along with a thousand other ticket holders whom I wouldn't have been surprised to find out also had, until a week previous, no intentions of getting caught up in the olympic hype. We were all there to see the women's Angola and Russia teams square off, then the South Korean and Spanish teams compete. Aware that almost everyone there that morning probably had no idea of the rules, the MC went through everything during the build up explaining the rules and strategies of the game and trying to get everyone into it. With few people having any idea who to support, the crowd got behind the Angolan's once they were established as the underdogs; the Russian's became the heels and suffered all the boo's. Everyone got in to the atmosphere, but it still wasn't quite enough to stop everyone from dozing off by the end of the second match. We wandered around the park afterwards, grabbing a glimpse of the impressive velodrome and basketball court. The official programme was a fleecing 10 pounds for skinny magazine full of ads, the food was pretty awful, but it was well worth the trip on a cold July (summer!?) morning.