Olympic Fever

The reason we live in London is the Olympics. My husband was involved in the development of the Athletes Village so just after London won the chance to host the games we left Sydney .. feels like a lifetime ago now. 

When we arrived in the UK, Stratford was a giant hellhole in the ground and now it’s a thriving mini-metropolis of incredibly buff people.

And yesterday I got to go there and stalk them.

While my husband admired his architectural handiwork, I was busy scouring the landscape for celebrity athletes. HOT celebrity athletes. First off the mark was South African swimming legend Chad Le Clos. (My daughter, Holly, asked me afterwards why he was staying in the South Africa apartments when he was wearing the Australian uniform.) We’ll pretend he’s an Aussie. See, matching outfits.

South African spunk-rat, Chad Le Clos

Layne Beachley. Surfer chic extraordinaire

Shortly afterwards I found Stephanie Rice surrounded by about a dozen male athletes outside Australia HQ. She’s absolutely stunning and talented and tall and brown and thin and sporty and nice and .. well I hope she at least has bad breath because it would be unfair for someone to be that perfect. That’s me on the right just in case you couldn’t tell us apart.

Steph Rice. Awesome name.

We were being shown around by one of the bigwigs from LOCOG and he told us that the night before they had fire engines in the village because some of the Moroccan athletes were flying a remote control toy helicopter in their apartment and it hit the ceiling and chopped off one of the sprinkler valves for the fire sprinklers. Three floors of their building were completely flooded. Apparently even super dooper athletes can be uncoordinated and stupid too.

Pretty Balconies

So we had a great day. I also got to visit the communal gym where all the athletes work out together. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take photos, but you’ll have to take my word for it that it took a very long time to get my salivating tongue off the floor. DELICCCCCIOUS.

The only olympic podium I’m ever likely to be on

And then I took my daughter to Wahacca and stuffed my gob with a buritto that had at least two trillion calories. It helped with the trauma of being previously surrounded by so many people with <5% body fat.

Steph
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