Back in 1992

Once upon a time, many moons ago (it feels like not that long ago) I went to the Olympics. It was 1992 and the host city was Barcelona. We arrived early in the morning (I think we traveled by bus from London, but those details are sketchy). I can give you an account because I was good and kept a bit of a journal.

We stayed in camping grounds near the city with dozens of other budget travellers (mostly antipodean of origin). When we arrived at the camp site someone had some free baseball tickets and we went to see Japan annihilate the Dominican Republic... Hey its the Olympics and you see what you can! That was our introduction to 2 weeks of minimal sleep and way too much alcohol.

It was the Olympics with the American Dream Team. When that basketball team moved, the whole of Barcelona knew about it. Police sirens blaring their escort, a police chopper overhead protecting them from the skies. Tickets for their games were being scalped at between US$1000 - $10000 for the finals. As long as it wasn't basketball involving the Americans, any other tickets came free or cheap - much cheaper than our pre-purchased tickets.

We managed to pick up cheap or free tickets everyday. The people of Barcelona had 5 free tickets each to all the non-finals team sports, and quite happily gave them to recipients of the participating country. We were the very grateful recipients of basketball, soccer, and hockey tickets on several occasions.

Over our first few days, we went to swimming finals, and saw Australia collect a few medals of each colour, Hayley Lewis, Suzie O'Niell, Nicole Stevenson, Samantha Riley, Kieren Perkins and Glen Houseman to name a few! We had pre-purchased tickets to the last day of the swimming as Kieren Perkins was sure to win the Gold in the 1500m, and you can't go to the Olympics and not see your country win a Gold medal.

Our third night was when our Olympic journey became more exciting. We met a couple of the Boomers (the Australian basketball team) having dinner at the next table to us. It led to my friend having an Olympic fling with one of them, but also led to us being allowed entry to the athletes night club every night, meeting just about all the Australian athletes and just plain hanging out with them. Okay we were probably groupies!!!

We saw tennis, the women's marathon entering the stadium, the men's and women's 100m finals (Gail Devers and Linford Christy were the fastest back then), and a fair few athletic heats.

The last week was taken up with team sports. Soccer in which Australia took bronze against Ghana. The Boomers came 4th in the basketball, I'm surprised we did that well knowing how much alcohol our team was consuming and how little sleep they were getting!

We took silver in the men's hockey against Germany. That being really the last event before the Games finishing, every Australian in Barcelona (including the other athletes) were in attendance, all consuming vast amounts of cerveza or sangria.

After 2 weeks with limited sleep, too much sun, far too much alcohol, and sore throats from chanting "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" it was time to head back to our lives in London, with a million memories to last a lifetime, and hundreds of stories to rehash every 4 years.

I could post several photos of drunken moments, drunk athletes, Olympic Venues but instead I've posted this one which apparently made it to Australian TV as many people we know saw us here! And its the only one that wasn't glued firmly into the photo album!!!