Meredith Shayne

Olympics

Well, London, that was a delightful opening ceremony. LOVED the music montage and the Cauldron, they were absolutely great. The cauldron was really stunning.

As someone who’s lived through a home-town Olympics, all I can say is enjoy it as much as you can. I have fond memories of the Sydney Olympics: watching Andrew Hoy leap off his horse after his gold medal ride in the dressage, clearly absolutely delighted, and watching him race up into the stands to greet his family and friends; the tiny girl beside us at the basketball, wrapped in the Italian flag and screaming her lungs out at the Italian basketball team as they played France; a whole bus full of people cheering their lungs out for the bus driver who had finally managed to get his struggling bus up over the hill we were trying to climb; sitting on the grass in the city watching a whole host of Aussie bands play for free; and just how happy everyone was to be there. I have experienced nothing like that atmosphere before or since.

I’m not really going to watch much of this Olympics, except as much of the equestrian events as I can, and probably some swimming (because – although God knows I do not want to jinx them – Aussies generally pop up in quite a few of the swimming finals), because I’m not into watching sport for sport’s sake, but I hope everyone involved has a great time.

You’ll have to allow me some bias when it comes to the opening ceremony that I think was the best though…

(I can’t embed the highlights video, but for those of you who want to see more than 12 minutes of horses, the link is here).