Today was the first day of competition at Weightlifting and was also the first day I got to put my training to use. We started bright and early at 8am ready for the Women’s 48kg category at 10am. The place was buzzing with journalists and photographers, and the excitement was definitely palpable. I was just happy that finally we would get to do something useful and worthwhile! There was also the possibility that China would achieve it’s first Gold medal for the Games if the Chinese failed in the Shooting – which was the first event to finish. The women started off lifting quite poorly under the pressure, and it wasn’t until CHEN Xiexia (CHN) came out that the crowd really saw how it was done. Although I was meant to be unbiased, I was secretly hoping Sibel OZKAN would win, just because we interviewed her and she was so lovely. Luckily, she got Silver, which I thought was a really great achievement for such a young girl.
When it was time for the mixed zone, I was meant to be reporting from BOB (Beijing Olympic Broadcasting) but there was no one there who spoke English and were interviewing who I wanted to interview, so I hightailed it off to the office to copytake, which turned out to be good as we had a lot of good quotes coming through. I think we all worked really well together and got the quotes out well. The only hiccough was when CET called and said our Gold medallist quote wasn’t good enough, but it was exactly what she said, so it is not as if we were going to twist the words that came out of her mouth to make her sound more interesting. Ah well.
For dinner, I went out with Paul and Josh for a change and had a nice little dinner in an area near the Drum Tower (yes the same day the guy was killed, but honestly, I feel safe here). When we got there we grabbed a few beers and jumped on a battery boat and went for a ride around the ‘river’ type thing.
It was lots of fun, and we only stopped during the hour to grab some more beers. After walking around a while and soaking up the atmosphere we went to a little Thai place for dinner which served up a feast for around $10 aussie dollars each. But then it was late and I had to be up early the next day to work the 8am-11pm shift. Shit hey!
No comments:
Post a Comment