Please Mind the Gap

Saturday was my first shift for the Olympic wrestling competition! The actual shift wasn't too exciting. But I'll start with the morning, as I had venue training first.

I arrived at the venue much earlier than I had planned. It's been advertised everywhere in London that the tube will be busy from 7am to 9am. I left about 7:45 expecting to be late, I had to be at the eXcel arena at 8:30 and the trip planner said it would take an hour. I arrived at the venue at 8:10. Much faster than I thought it would be. As soon as I stepped off the train I heard someone say my name and sure enough another volunteer that I had met in December at the test event was stepping off the train with me. It was very nice to have someone else to do everything for the first time together.

During training I found the rest of my assigned group, who except for two, I had met in December. It was so nice to be back together and it seemed like the test even had just been last week. My team leader was just as funny and energetic as he had been and everyone gets along great. The actual training itself was repetitive, essentially all the same information we received at the test event we got again,  but not everyone volunteering currently was at the test event, so I suppose they appreciated it.

After lunch our actual shift started, and almost everyone in my group had to work immediately. We started putting up the flags for the dressing room assignments so that athletes and coaches knew what room they should be in. We organized our storage room, and threw away some things that the judo volunteers had left, and then we had some downtime.

Most of what my team does happens out where the competition takes place, the field of play, but there was a turnover of the field of play from judo to wrestling which needed to be done in 24 hours. To be honest the turnover itself went smoothly, but it took longer than expected I think. We were to be done with our shift at 6pm but we were unable to get equipment out to the field of play until the mats, arena, and technical/electronic things had been set up. Although things ended up getting done, nobody likes delay, and of course no one would admit that things were behind.

While waiting for the competition area to be finished weigh-in's for the following day's competition took place, which fortunately my group is involved with. We had to get the scales into the weigh in rooms, there are three, and organize some stress balls with the number 1-22 on them for the players to have when they did the draw. For people who aren't familiar with wrestling I will explain weigh-in's and the disciplines of wrestling in a following post. I ended up leaving the arena at about 9:30. Some of the other competitions at the arena were finishing at that time so the train back to the flat was busy but of course emptied along the way.