Our final event of the Olympics and it was a big one - Athletics! We arrived early, even before the stadium was open. It meant we got to walk in and see an empty stadium - quite surreal. We walked around trying out different seats, deciding where would be best to sit, finally settling on the home straight. We did have numbered seats but we just decided to hope no one came to sit in the seats we had chosen and fortunately they didn't.
We were sat in front of a lovely Brazilian family. They and many others in the stadium were trying to watch the football final on their phone. It went to penalties and there was possibly the largest cheer of the night around the stadium when Brazil won!! It was great to be a part of the victory in a funny way! And when the Athletics finally started the Brazilian family we had bonded with were cheering on Team GB too which was lovely!
As well as watching the football, we occupied ourselves before the action started by using the binoculars to try and spot presenters from the BBC which I enjoyed!
Events kicked off with the women's high jump and then more and more started appearing so it was hard to know where to look! I generally found the track events more exciting than the field events. They also started doing the medal ceremonies from the day before so we had the great excitement of Bolt getting his ninth medal for the 4x100m relay. I really loved the crowds reaction to him - there was applause as the medalists came out of the tunnel, bigger applause when it got to the Jamaicans, then it just exploded when Bolt was spotted - wow!
At last it was Mo time - what John and I had come for. I was feeling tense. We were all expecting him to complete the double double - what a lot of pressure. They ran out to the far side of the track then quickly were off. It was funny not having a commentary for the race so I was never sure whether he was in a good position or not. I was anxious that he had come to the front too early. We were counting down the laps. It was fun to have the second Brit to keep an eye on and divert the tension from Mo. It was wonderful as he came round the final bend in front of us and was kicking on in the lead. Woohoo!!!!! And even more fab, he came to celebrate with his family on our side of the stadium.
We then had barely calmed down when we had the next excitement of the 4x400m relays. I've decided it might just be my favourite race to watch! I won't give a full race recap but when Christine came round to the final straight, I was screaming far more than for Mo and so much more wide eyed and delighted that she held on for Bronze - yaaaaaaay!!!!
After the men's relay (glossing over that due to gutting absence of Brits) we just had the medal ceremonies to wait for. It was getting late and they kept us waiting by doing the 5000m ceremony last. It was worth the wait. It was mainly Brits left in the audience and we sang 'God Save The Queen' with gusto. My second favourite part of the evening was seeing his cheeky grin as he went in to his pocket to take out his other Rio Gold Medal! Go Mo!! Love it! A super evening and a super way to end our Olympic Experience.
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