I’m a sucker for athletics. Whether it’s the British Trials, Diamond League meetings or, as of yesterday, the opening of the track and field programme at the Commonwealth Games, I’ll watch it, guppy-mouthed with a Diet Coke in hand.
This year, my athletics viewing will gain extra frisson as I’m actually going to the Commonwealth Games – not as a competitor, I hasten to add, but as a paying member of the public.
I’d like to think we have the best seats in the house but in reality I’ll probably be asking for binoculars and struggling to tell the girls from the boys (in the early 1980s this was regular family entertainment!).
Last year, we went ‘en famille’ to the Sainsbury Anniversary Games. We might have watched from ‘the Gods’, but it was a brilliant day out. The atmosphere was electric and the partisan crowd clapped and cheered for the home favourites, the biggest cheer of the day going to double Olympic champion Mo Farah.
I was looking forward to watching Farah run again, but as most of you will be probably be aware, Mo has decided not to run at the Games after a bout of illness, instead opting for the later – and probably easier – European Championships.
There’ll still be plenty on offer for athletics nuts, though. And of course, major championships have a habit of springing surprises. Who would have predicted that an Australian would have won the opening event, the marathon, against the might of the African nations? Or that Denise Lewis’s hair would have got even higher?
From a personal perspective, I’m most looking forward to England’s Andy Vernon in the 5,000m. Andy originally hails from my own club of Stubbington Green and it’s amazing to think that he’s finally nailed his 5,000m event with a 13.11 clocking and a place in the Commonwealth Games.
You can’t beat live athletics for atmosphere and from what I’ve seen so far of the Games, it promises to be a real spectacle. I’m even looking forward to the weather – after two weeks of sleepless, humidity-wrecked nights, the Glasgow temperatures will be a welcome respite. Let’s hope it stays red-hot on the track though!
