LONDON OLYMPICS – Day 13 Recap, BMX

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Today London held the men’s and women’s BMX qualifying rounds at the awesome BMX venue in Olympic Park.  I missed BMX’s inaugural Olympic run in Beijing four years ago, so I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present than to cover the event today. In order to determine the seeding, each rider has to complete one lap around the Olympic Park BMX Track, filled with turns, burms, and jumps that remind me of playing old school Atari Motorcross games. This is really the closest that the Olympics gets to the X-Games and the IOC should probably start infusing more younger generations sports like this and replacing ones like badminton and table tennis. If golf is going to be added to the Olympics soon which I think is very smart by the IOC, shouldn’t surfing be added as well over ping-pong? I’ve never heard of “Table Tennis Digest” or “Ping-Ponger”, but there are a multitude of surfing magazines, websites, sponsors, and breaks at any country that would host the Olympics including England or say BRAZIL! Seems like a no brainer that surfing should be in the Olympics, how rad would it be to see Kelly Slater crying on the Olympic podium? Anyways, the BMX course was fun to shoot, challenging to find something really nice, although it was a luxury to be able to place the remote cameras on different jumps on the course…

After grabbing a later lunch (or was it a early dinner?) I headed over to hockey and got there to realize I missed the game. Was bummed I couldn’t shoot girls in short skirts smacking a hard ball around a wet synthetic grass field,  but it wasn’t a biggie as I just took the bus over to the Olympic stadium and to try to shoot athletics in some nice light. But when I got there I forgot that the sun doesn’t get over the Olympic Stadiums walls for the finals and it’s all in shadows. No worries, it was my 38th birthday today and I decided I was not going to stress out.

But that lasted about an hour because during the women’s 1500M semifinals, a fan decided to hit me in the back of the head and shoulder to inform me that I was blocking him while doing his job. I really had to restrain myself and told him as calmly as I could that his seat was behind photographers and media seating which means he may get blocked by our cameras every now and then and if he hit me again I would get the police to escort him out. The guys’ checks were about the same red as in the Union Jacks, his eye’s had more baggage than an airplane, and I felt sorry that he was such an angry dude, and probably the only mean person I had run into since I was in London.

I quickly forgot the mean dude as soon as Jamaican Usain Bolt jumped back on the track, and had no problem today making it into the men’s 200 meter final after charging hard in the first 100 meters and letting up towards the end. But the highlight of the night for me was watching Cali native Allison Felix finally win the Women’s 200M Final, after she repeated as silver medalist in that event in the last games. It’s always great to see good things happen to good people, and she’s deserved that gold for sometime and will now forever be an Olympic Champion.