Thursday 6 September 2012

Day 7: meeting another gold medallist

My position in the village has obviously made me privy to the world's finest Paralympians. They are all absolute stars, very accessible, chatty and willing to give up their time.

I was again positioned in the athletes dinning hall, again on a mission to raise the voting %.

Spoke to all sorts of people during my shift, including the "darling of the games" to date, Djibouti's only athlete, Houssein Omar Hassan. See story below...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/paralympic-sport/9515200/Paralympics-2012-Houssein-Omar-Hassan-wins-over-hearts-and-minds-with-his-brave-if-slow-1500m-performance.html

The funniest part of our conversation was my attempt to speak in French. I got him to the voting station but failed to realise he'd voted before.... damn I wish I'd listened more at school!!

My main highlight of the day was to meet USA's gold medallist Megan Fisher. Earlier in the day, she'd won cycling gold at Brands Hatch in the C4 time trial. She'd also won track silver earlier in the week in the individual pursuit.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-05/sports/chi-paralympic-gold-for-hinsdale-cyclist-fisher-20120905_1_paralympic-gold-and-bronze-third-gold

We chatted for ages... and she even posed for photos allowing me to see the gold medal.

By the end of the day we'd got the voting % over 44... and my manager was disappointed that I was not working again until the final Sunday.

I gather final % score was 48. Down on the 80% in Beijing, but well over 2000 athletes had gone through the process.

And as the night drew to a close... I got a picture of Ellie Simmonds! Also saw Aled Davies the gold medallist for GB in the discus.

No comments:

Post a Comment