London 2012 Day 12

The Olympic Stadium from our seats.

We'd applied for 8 athletics sessions to coincide with the 8 multi event sessions (my old event) so if we'd been lucky we could have been at Super Saturday and seen Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah winning gold. As it was the only session we got was the first morning session of the decathlon so 100m, Long Jump and Shot Put, plus whatever heats and qualifiers were on as well.

The Decathlon 100m was impressive with the new world record holder Ashton Eaton running 10.35 the fastest ever Olympic decathlon time, but 0.14 seconds below his pb. Britain's Daniel Awde had a good start too with 10.71, a lifetime best.

A bit drama at the far end of the stadium in the Mens pole vault qualifying where Cuban Lazaro Borges's pole snaps in two places during his first attempt at 5.35. He survives though and goes on to successfully clear 5.35 & 5.50 although didn't make the final as he had too many failures.

At our end of the stadium we'd been following the Womens hammer where in the third and final round when lying well out of the qualifying places Sophie Hitchon threw 71.98m, breaking her own British record and although not an automatic qualifying distance it proved good enough to get her into the final.

The largest cheer of the morning was certainly for Mo Farah in the heats of the 5,000m. The 10,000m gold medallist qualified in third place in the first heat after having to work hard in a very quick last lap. The second heat was even faster, in fact the fastest heat ever in Olympic qualifying history won by Ethiopia's Dejen Gebremeskel, with all the fastest losers coming from this heat, but unfortunately not Great Britain's Nick McCormick who finished 12th Hopefully by the time the final comes on Saturday Mo Farah will be a little more recovered from his 10,000m victory and then who knows...

Back to the Pole Vault and Britain's commonwealth silver medallist Steve Lewis clears his opening height of 5.50m at his first attempt and this actually proves to be his only jump of the day as he ends up in 9th equal position along with six other competitors and it is decided that instead of just the best 12, all 14 will qualify for the final.

In the decathlon long jump Daniel Awde is struggling, fouling his first two jumps then on his third and final jump he is well behind the board, 26cm in fact, recording a modest 6.83m and badly hurting his left knee in the process. This injury unfortunately forces him to pull out of the competition.

Better news on the track where Britain's Lynsey Sharp gets through to the 800m semi-finals finishing second behind Pamelo Jelimo's 2:00.56. The final heat featured Sarah Attar, the first woman from Saudi Arabia to compete in athletics in Olympic history. She finished last in 2:44.95 but that's not really the point. An historic moment in the London Olympic Stadium and well appreciated by the sell-out crowd.

There was a bit of a gap in proceedings now before the third event in the decathlon, the shot put. I was starting to feel not exactly great, not sure why, we were high up and in the shade so shouldn't be the sun, maybe the early start, maybe whatever had Mrs L feeling not on top form the last couple of days and seemed to affect me a little yesterday. Anyway the shot put started at the far end of the stadium, it was quite distant and I didn't find it terribly enthralling, in fact found myself dozing off on a few occasions. A pity to end our session like that, but we'd now have time to explore the Olympic Park.

I'm afraid it was all downhill for me from there. I tried to rehydrate, if that was the problem, I tried to eat, if that was the problem, I tried to rest, if that was the problem, but nothing seemed to shake whatever it was off and eventually I told Mrs L to go off and explore on her own while hopefully I'd recover a bit.

She did, I didn't and eventually we headed home. I really struggled with the walk back to Stratford station, the train journey to Broxbourne and the train journey to Hertford East. I let Mrs L go fetch the car and while I waited at Hertford East I finally bade farewell to the contents of my stomach. I chose the non-recyclable bin as the most suitable receptacle - apologies to whoever came across it, but hopefully in that it was a sealed bin liner it may not even have been noticed.

Back home just after nine and I was starting to feel better. As I caught up with what else had been happening at the Olympics from a British point of view with no medals at all it struck me that we'd probably been at the best session, witnessing a British record and some fine British performances, just a shame this once in a lifetime opportunity had finished the way it did for me. Hey ho, let's not complain - We were in the Olympic Stadium for the London 2012 Games.