Shift - Day 2

An early start for the shift today - at least the hotel provides the hot buffet from 0630hrs.  It takes about 10 mins to walk to the NEC accredited entrance at Birmingham International Railway station.

Security today was run by the army, and each day there are different messages to what has to go through the scanner - today it was belts, yesterday belts could be worn.

The only good thing is that it takes a few moments to get though - perhaps the adjacent airport might want to use them after the end of the Games - given the long lines being experienced there (and at other airports)

We are covering two sports - in different halls - so there is a lot of walking to done - today it has been 14,489 steps.  Seems to be increasing each day.  Given the nature of our work we don’t take any sport pictures in case an athlete could be identified.  However did see a Gold medal match today - and given our access we have a pitch side seat for the duration of the session.

We also had to be on good behaviour today as a WADA (World Antidoping Agency) representative came to observe out testing station and all of out interaction with athletes.  The representative was a previous 400m female sprinter from Guyana - chatting to her she had competed at London 2012, Glasgow CG 2014, and World Athletics events before retiring (all events I have worked at). She said she misses keeping fit and not travelling so much.  Anyway the end result is that she fed back that our doping control station was one of the best she had ever observed.

And now some feedback from a previous post.  I mentioned about having a “Save the Bull” petition and I discovered that there is actually a petition being mounted for exactly that.  There was a bit of a issue yesterday when it was discovered that the names of those killed in the Birmingham pub bombing in 1974 were engraved on the piece of the armour which was removed by the two aerial performers during the Opening Ceremony.  The relatives were not concerned about the names being on it, just that they had not informed in advance that they were.  The OC organisers apologised for this error.

The medal table shows Australia at the top - it has to be seen in the context that at the CG the four UK Home Nations compete under individual country designations and not Team GB (including NI)

Lots of excitement from the win of the Lionesses at Wembley has overshadowed the CG today (plus the lead story on the news throughout the day).  Reported that as well as the 87,000 stadium spectators over 17 million watched on BBC1

Only one pic today but two non-cryptic crossword clues:

1.   Oz bird (3)

2.   Oz (5)

One is easy, the other needs some lateral thinking




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