6/31/12 Boxing tournament at XCel
I woke up on the last day of June excited. The day had finally come, I was going to an Olympic event! Back in March, I spent a lot of time debating about how I was going to spend my christmas money on event tickets. I believe there are 32 different events at these Olympics, many of which I hadn't seen live. It would have been awesome to see an athletics event or a basketball game. But I am fortunate enough to have been to many basketball games and go to Oregon, where Hayward Field attracts world class track meets such as the Pre Classic. After looking at the available events and my schedule while abroad, I decided to attend a boxing event. My reasoning is that most boxing matches take place in Vegas where I do not frequent and that boxing is a unique sporting event and I would witness a pure form of the sport while at the Olympics.
XCel is the conference center in London. It hosed events such as Boxing, weightlifting, ping pong, judo and fencing, some of the more random sports I suppose. LOCOG provided spectators with free travel cards with their tickets. I had to transfer onto the Docklands Light Rail, the DLR, to get to the event. I'll say this about the host city, helpful and noticeable volunteers were able to answer my questions and I never got lost due to their availability. Anyways, I made it to the XCel arena with about 10 minutes to spare before the boxing started. A couple events must have been starting at the same time so there were a lot of people representing many nations hustling to their arenas.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and took in the atmosphere. I made my way to my seat where a suprise was awaiting. My ticket was for a B group section and was for a seat in row 16 in my section. Upon seeing this, I thought I would have had a decent seat but as it turns out the A group had the seats rows 1-15. My seat was actually in the first row of the section and I had an un-obstructed view of the action. It was awesome. The schedule for the day was preliminary matches for the 60kg and 64kg weight classes. To add to the prime viewing of my seat, the boxers came out of a tunnel directly to my right. Two boxers would be brought out, one in red and one in blue. The referees and judges would be announced as the starting bell would ring, which was actually quite loud. There would be three rounds of three minutes with a minute break inbetween. A winner would be decided and I'm guessing there were no matches that sent fighters out of the tournament. Also, this was a special year for boxing in the Olympics. It's the first year women are competing in the Games. A remarkable moment for the sport.
There wasn't a fight that day with someone from Great Britain but there was one featuring a US Boxer vs a boxer from Kazakhstan. And no, Borat did not give a rousing speech to the audience before this match! Anyways, the energy level in the arena was raised to another level. Obviously, the USA is not best friends with every country on earth so the crowd was definetly split between the two fighters. The fight was close in the first round but the guy from Kazakhstan brought a bit more energy to the next two rounds. It ended in overwhelming favor of the Kazakhstan fighter and the guy from America showed grace and sportsmanship in defeat.
Soon after, the twelth and final fight of the day would be fought and the day's bouts would be over. I ended making the right decision by attending the boxing match. I learned a lot about the score and was able to notice if a boxer was a lefty, or southpaw, by the end of the day. I got experience how Olympic events were organized and how they felt. I feel a new sense of appreciation for the boxing discipline and the agility and toughness it requires.
XCel is the conference center in London. It hosed events such as Boxing, weightlifting, ping pong, judo and fencing, some of the more random sports I suppose. LOCOG provided spectators with free travel cards with their tickets. I had to transfer onto the Docklands Light Rail, the DLR, to get to the event. I'll say this about the host city, helpful and noticeable volunteers were able to answer my questions and I never got lost due to their availability. Anyways, I made it to the XCel arena with about 10 minutes to spare before the boxing started. A couple events must have been starting at the same time so there were a lot of people representing many nations hustling to their arenas.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and took in the atmosphere. I made my way to my seat where a suprise was awaiting. My ticket was for a B group section and was for a seat in row 16 in my section. Upon seeing this, I thought I would have had a decent seat but as it turns out the A group had the seats rows 1-15. My seat was actually in the first row of the section and I had an un-obstructed view of the action. It was awesome. The schedule for the day was preliminary matches for the 60kg and 64kg weight classes. To add to the prime viewing of my seat, the boxers came out of a tunnel directly to my right. Two boxers would be brought out, one in red and one in blue. The referees and judges would be announced as the starting bell would ring, which was actually quite loud. There would be three rounds of three minutes with a minute break inbetween. A winner would be decided and I'm guessing there were no matches that sent fighters out of the tournament. Also, this was a special year for boxing in the Olympics. It's the first year women are competing in the Games. A remarkable moment for the sport.
There wasn't a fight that day with someone from Great Britain but there was one featuring a US Boxer vs a boxer from Kazakhstan. And no, Borat did not give a rousing speech to the audience before this match! Anyways, the energy level in the arena was raised to another level. Obviously, the USA is not best friends with every country on earth so the crowd was definetly split between the two fighters. The fight was close in the first round but the guy from Kazakhstan brought a bit more energy to the next two rounds. It ended in overwhelming favor of the Kazakhstan fighter and the guy from America showed grace and sportsmanship in defeat.
Soon after, the twelth and final fight of the day would be fought and the day's bouts would be over. I ended making the right decision by attending the boxing match. I learned a lot about the score and was able to notice if a boxer was a lefty, or southpaw, by the end of the day. I got experience how Olympic events were organized and how they felt. I feel a new sense of appreciation for the boxing discipline and the agility and toughness it requires.