February 22......

London Olympic Aquatics centre

FINA World Cup Diving Cup. 

(part of the ''London prepare'' programme to test facilities for the upcoming Olympics)

Main Pool

Diver.

Little wonder his highest score from any one of the 7 judges was 8.5

Observations :

1. It took longer to get there than the event itself took. 1 hour 40 versus 1 hour 20.

2. Little to no signage from Main station to Aquatic Centre

3. Entire area is windswept and it sits astride the recently completed 'Westfield Shopping Complex' 

( Europe's largest indoor shopping centre )

4. Who on earth allowed the Mittal family to construct that steel mess of a tower ? Perhaps the other question should be - How much did Mittal 'donate' to be allowed to have that mess of a tower constructed ?

5. The interior of the main pool arena is cosy warm

6. Chinese and Japanese have a genetic advantage when it comes to diving

7. Scoring system is relatively easy . 7 judges score out of 10. The lowest 2 and highest 2 are discarded. The total of the remaining 3 is then multiplied by the degree of difficulty of the dive to give the total. Each diver does 6 dives and are ranked by their total score

8. Little wonder I didn't get any tickets for the swimming. This was a test event and even so, 1/4  of the best seats were taken up by coaches and fellow team members. The complex itself is scheduled to hold 17,500 spectators. That is the entire complex. The main pool area wouldn't hold more than 10,000. 

9. For an event in the main pool there isn't a bad seat.

10. Security is taken a bit far when they ask you take your sweater off and to put it through an x-ray machine.

11. It will be interesting to see how utilised the area is post-games. Been as it is in the middle of a somewhat socio-economically challenged area of London.

12. This takes the number of 50 metre swimming pools in the UK (England-Wales-Scotland-Northern Ireland) from 23 to 24. And the number of Olympic sized pools (50 metres with 10 lanes ) from 5 to 6 (Australia has 47 pools that meet the Olympic Standard). Yes that is right.  24 pools measuring 50 metres for a population of 61 million people. That's one pool for every 2.54 million people. Makes the achievement of any notable British swimmer even more impressive. Firstly they had to find a pool !

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