London 2012 Just keeps getting better…

April 15th, 2010 by Will

I say all this should I qualify again! I know what a ball ache it is to qualify for the Olympic Games and I am also aware you have to be lucky as well but I get more excited about London 2012 every day…

I first learnt that we were awarded the Olympics while having a meeting with Graeme Maw our Performance Director and my coach in Loughborough Student Union. I was discussing with him some funding for potential London 2012 athletes that was being made available to Olly Freeman and myself and how we will spend it?! I don’t think we even realised that the results were being announced during that meeting!

To be honest, I didn’t really follow London 2012’s bid. I just took is as it came, It didn’t really occur to me how cool it will be to have London Olympics in our home town and what an incredible opportunity it would be. Now I have been to an Olympics I now realise how much of a huge deal this is…

I then realised how perfectly London Olympics falls for me. I was 21 when it was announced. I will be 27 years old on the start line. With one games experience in hand. An Olympics comes round to the UK probably on average once every 50 years and it falls on the perfect age for me. Probably peak fitness between 27-31 years old.

I love the fact that finally after three Olympic cycles we can now race in a ‘normal race’ in a ‘normal place’ with good food, no need to do heat chamber testing, or travel thousands of miles to stay in a strange place.

If I had it my way I would wake up on the morning of the Olympic Triathlon final from the same bed in Waterbeach, Cambridge (50miles away) as I grew up in for 18 years and rose from for early morning swimming for 10 of those years. Eat the same porridge oats, watch the same TV and have the same conversation with my parents at the breakfast table, then casually get into the Volvo V40 and cruse down (probably late knowing my Dad) to Hyde Park in the Olympic Lane and rock up saying, ‘hello boys…lets go then!’ Like it was The Cambridge Duathlon.

Yesterday, Loughborough University the place I have called home for the past 7 years was awarded the GB Team Holding Camp for the duration leading into the Olympics. I will have to drive not even 2k to all my sessions from the comfort of my own home. It was previously awarded to Aldershot (rubbish, boring venue) so was delighted to hear London 2012 swings my way again.

I hope this race is meant to be…