The Olympic Games in Rio and Brazil
Rio De Janeiro
The 2016 Olympic Games were hosted in Rio de Janeiro and we were lucky enough to attend! We had bought a few tickets before leaving the UK through CoSport as we planned to be in Rio for the first week of the games.We have had limited wifi across Patagonia and now are able to update you with event news and exciting gadgets used along the way…
We increased our ticket count when we arrived- buying; rugby 7s final tickets along with, equestrian and athletics for Super Saturday. If you are ever going to a games in the future try to buy straight from the official website rather than a reseller to avoid disappointment and wasting half a day waiting to collect.
We were picked up at the airport by our hostel and even though it was 6am and check in was not until 2pm, we were able to get into our room to get some much needed sleep! Our hostel Samba Green was situated in the area of Botofogo, perfect location for us; a 20 min walk to Copacabana beach, next to the metro for transport links to all Olympic venues and had restaurants and shops really close by too. It’s worth mentioning here that the staff in the hostel could not have been more helpful and it was by far the best service we have had!
Our afternoon and evening on day 1 did not disappoint; we headed up the famous Sugar Loaf mountain for views over the city. The ticket cost 70 reals and we had to take 2 cable cars to reach the top, well worth it when you see the view! We stayed for sunset and could see across to Christ of Redeemer, the airport, Olympic Stadium and Copacabana beach.
Day 2 was the start of our Olympic spectating and we travelled (very easily) to the Olympic park in Barra for the Women’s gymnastics preliminary rounds. We were in the afternoon session which saw; GB, Brazil and 6 other countries complete for places in the final. The atmosphere was amazing especially with the Brazillian home support for their gymnasts.
Our next day at the games was a busy one with 2 events to watch in 2 different venues. In the morning we travelled to Deodoro to watch the Cross country element of the equestrian One Day Eventing. We picked a spot at one of the water jumps beside some fellow Team GB supporters. We waited to see Pippa Funnel on ‘Billy the Biz’ before heading to see some other fences and the combination in the second water.
It was really easy to catch our transport from Deodoro to the Olympic Park, especially as we had purchased Olympic travel cards which were contactless and allowed us on any public transport for 7 days. The next event was the men’s gymnastics – all round team final and the Team GB men were looking strong amongst the competition. We had good seats near to the pommel horse, rings and vault. The competition was very close between Japan, China, Russia and GB for the top spots. The British boys gave a brilliant performance on all apparatus and did extremely well to place 4th being such a young team.
Our 4th event was the men’s (C1) canoe slalom in the X-Park where the BMX demonstration events also took place. We joined some other novice canoe slalom spectators, as well as our Canadian friend Lauren on the side of the course. We were really impressed at the level of skill and concentration shown by the athletes in this sport as the margins were very small at the top of the table. We saw the semi-final qualifiers,where the top 10 advanced onto the finals. Team GB made it into the final and we were able to stay and watch. Winner Gargaud from France set a very fast time of 94.17 seconds which the rest of the field were unable to beat.
The next set of tickets were for the first of 2 rugby sessions at Deodoro stadium, where team GB took on a number of teams for qualification to the semis. Our first game was against The All Blacks and we won 21-19. We then went onto beat Argentina in a tight match in the quarter finals and then beat South Africa in the semi final. We were lucky enough to get tickets to the rugby final’s where we saw GB v Fiji. We were beaten 43-7, Fiji were by far the better team and favourites coming into the competition. The atmosphere at the rugby 7s was fantastic as it always is at 7s tournaments! We joined friendly fans from all over the world.
The following day we were in court 1 for 10 hours of Olympic tennis action. We landed very lucky with these tickets; not only were they £25, first up was Andy Murray in his quarter final match! This was a 3 set tie breaker match against American Steve Johnson, Andy looked strong in the first set winning 6-0, then the American fought back winning the second set. After 2 hours of tennis Andy won the third set tie breaker to advance onto the semis the next day before beating Del Potro to claim Gold.
Following the excitement of the Murray match was another high quality game between Gail Monfils and Kei Nishikori. We then saw the Bronze medal men’s doubles match between Canada and USA, followed by a mixed doubles with Venus Williams and playing partner representing the USA against Italy. During our session on court 1, the organisers opened up Centre Court where the Gold medal men’s doubles match was taking place. We had free entry to this match and were able to get very close to the action to see Nadal and Lopez win gold for Spain against Romania and stayed for the medal ceremony too.
Following the tennis was ‘Super Saturday’ where we saw many different events, but the stand out events for us were watching Greg Rutherford, Mo Farah and Jess Ennis-Hill attempt to repeat their performances from 2012 and win gold in the long jump, 10,000m and the heptathlon. Unfortunately, these achievements weren’t quite matched, with Greg winning Bronze, Mo winning Gold (after falling in the early stages of the race!!) and Jess winning Silver. However, seeing GB athletes win these medals, we still consider this to be a Super Saturday!
As you can see in the photos above we were able to make use of PolePod (bottom right, click link to see more) to take photos with our digital camera and GoPro and could easily change the angle to suit the photo. We have made use of PolePod; skiing, hiking, at events, for Panoramic photos and more! If you want more info about PolePod you can click this youtube link or email inventor Andrew Davidson: a.davidson@asd-zine.co.uk
After a busy week of events we headed north for a couple of days to see one of Chris’s school friends and his wife who live in Belo Horizonte. This was a nice break from the rush of the Olympics in Rio and it was great to catch up with old friends.
We then returned to Rio for 2 final events; 200m final at the athletics and the Women’s Hockey final. First, the highlight of the athletics being the 200m final in which we saw Usain Bolt win his 8th Olympic Gold! We also saw Scottish athlete Lynsey Sharp, 1500m semi-fnal and a new Olympic record set in the Shot Put of 22.52 metres!
Our 10th and final event was the Women’s hockey final at Deodoro Stadium, a highly anticipated match with GB taking on world number 1’s Holland… And what a match it turned out to be, as after normal time the score lay at 3-3 draw and the teams went onto a shoot out against the goalie. GB won 2-0 in the most spectacular fashion after having played some unbelievable hockey and maintaining their composure throughout the whole match. The icing on the cake for us…getting a photo with one of my fellow Youth Sport Trust mentor’s and now Olympic Champion Alex Danson! A moment we will never forget!
Leaving Rio on such a high was an incredible feeling, we had the most amazing Olympic games as spectators! It was also a great feeling to be part of a friendly and successful games, despite the negative media coverage that any Games seems to attract, Rio proved the haters wrong! We loved Rio as a city, felt safe the whole time and could not have wished for a more incredible experience, thank you Rio!
We took some down time after the Olympics to enjoy the Brazilian coast, firstly the beautiful island of Ilha Grande, before moving onto the coastal town of Paraty.
We are now nearing the end of our South American adventure and what an adventure it has been! We will update with activities from Argentina and Chile before we take on our next continent…Africa!
Speak soon,
Hayley and Chris
Patagonia
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