AN OLYMPIC DIARY
It was a bright and warm Friday- - a welcome change from the dull and windy wet weather we
had been having. Amy and I met up with our friends and walked towards the tube. The crowds
milling around us were all excited at the prospects of a full day finally watching Olympic athletes
in action in London!
The tube train was cramped and sweltering hot, but no-one appeared to mind. It seemed as if
all the cares of Londoners had melted away as the doors opened and the crowd surged forward
along the wide avenue leading to the Olympic Stadium. Amy showed me an article about the
opening ceremony in the newspaper. We were impressed by the words of the chairman of the
London Olympic Organising Committee who talked about "keen but friendly rivalry", and said
London’s games represented a "warm flame of hope for a better understanding in the world
which has burned so low". The colourful banners waved on their masts, and people were
cheering groups of soldiers in uniform as they marched up the avenue. We felt very proud in
our uniforms. For once the Prime Minister said what we were all thinking: 'May the weather be
fine, the events well contested and records be broken.' At least the weather was behaving!
It took quite a while for the queues to file through the security at the gates and it was 10.30
before we finally found our seats in row 16 on the South stand. Seats 60 & 61 had good views
and the new cinder track and the paraphernalia of the field sports laid out on the green turf
made us even more excited as we settled in and made ourselves comfortable.
Everyone was talking about the BBC television cameras dotted around the field. We wondered
if we would get to see any of the coverage. Not that it mattered to us that morning- we just felt
so lucky to be in the stadium. Only a week or two before it seemed that all of the seats for the
games were sold, and now here we were, looking forward to a day of thrills and excitement.
At 11 prompt the flags were hoisted and the officials streamed out onto the field, followed by the
athletes - to a mighty cheer from the crowd. We were quite surprised how many people from
overseas were in the stadium. As the athletes for the High Jump Qualifiers warmed up we could
see supporters for France, USA, Canada and India in the seats around us. The paper said that
a total of 59 nations had sent athletes. We could see an excited group of Norwegians in the
stand to our right, and managed to recognise flags from Australia, Finland Sweden Greece and
even Uruguay as we scanned the crowds. It was a fantastic atmosphere, and I marvelled at the
organisation and ‘stage management’ that went into making such a massive event go so
smoothly.
The rivals in the crowd bantered and cheered as their men took their chances over the first barset at 1.60 metres! Amy and I worked out that this was 5'3” - exactly my height. In the
programme we read that the qualifying height would be 1.87 meters - this was higher than any
of the athletes competing. The sun grew hot, and soon we had our heads covered in scarves
and everyone was in shirt sleeve order as we pencilled the qualifiers for the first event into our
programme– including Adedoyin of Team GB. He would have to work hard to beat the record
set by Steers of USA in Los Angeles, though: 2.11 metres.
The day flew by. We enjoyed the women's discus (which ran alongside the high jump) and after
a break, when we ate soggy sandwiches in the thankfully now-shaded stand, Amy brought back
some drinks and we settled down for the 400 metres hurdles (Whittle got through for GB in heat
2). We all got very overexcited by the 100 metres heats- all twelve of them. These started very
well for us with McCorquodale in heat 1 and then Jones in heat 4 both qualifying. Some of the
times were really fast- Dillard the American managed 10.4 seconds. “Only 0.2 seconds slower
than Jesse Owens’ world record in Chicago”, Amy said, as she scribbled the qualifiers and
times into our informative programme. So fast! Dillard’s legs seemed like a blur, and this was
only a qualifying heat.
As the afternoon wore on we took turns to fill in the results in our programme, and take walks
around the huge stadium chatting to all the friendly people in the crowd. It was very sunny and
we mopped our brows in the heat. I nearly missed the high jump final at 4.30 because I got
chatting to some Australians, but their friends ran up and dragged them away when John Winter
was about to take his first jump (one of the girls from Perth knew him). I found my way back to
my seat and picked up the programme just in time to see him jump with a very unusual style
and clear the bar at 1.98M.
His was the winning jump, although Paterson from GB did well to jump 1.90M and come in
seventh place. Later we found out this was one of only 2 gold medals won by Australia, so we
were pleased to have seen Winter win his. The Aussies were jubilant (a bit insufferable our
friend Eric thought) when we saw them later!
By 6.00 PM we were all exhausted but we all cheered along with the Czechs in the 10,000
meters when Emil Zatopec raced across the line in 29mins and 26.7 secs – beating the Helsinki
world record by nearly 9 seconds. Everyone said that his time would stand for a few years and
we agreed that it would take a lot to beat him – he was 11 seconds ahead of the second runner.
What a fantastic end to the day!
Before the games everyone seemed worried about whether we could make a good job of
hosting it. They are being called the austerity games (although they cost over £700,000) but we
thought it was a really splendid effort, and the 120,000 people crammed into the Empire
Stadium in Wembley today seemed to agree- judging by the noise. Amy and I had certainly
never heard crowds so loud!
Tomorrow I will treat Amy to a day at the Olympic Games Exhibition of Sport in Art at the V&A.
Some of the girls say that there are reduced price seats for the forces at two new musicals:
Carissima at the Palace Theatre and Cage Me A Peacock at The Strand, so we are hoping to
make a day of it and enjoy our time together in London before we are demobbed.
GB team did really well coming twelfth and winning 3 gold medals and 23 altogether. We all felt
so pleased to have been part of such an event, and wondered what the future would hold for us
after such a low few years. Would we see the Olympics back in London again?
Extracts from a diary and Games programme for Friday July 30th 1948: the writer left the Women’s Auxiliary Air
Force in August 1948 (age 25), after 8 years service. She was stationed in Oxford and London, and chauffeured
many famous officers and ‘boffins’ including ‘Dam Buster’ inventor Barnes Wallace, Wing Commanders Leonard
Cheshire and Guy Gibson, and Air Marshall ‘Bomber’ Harris. She retained a keen interest in theatre and stage
management throughout her life and was a teacher in Yorkshire before retirement in the 1980’s.