Saturday 17 August
It’s been fascinating mixing with coaches and parents from different sports at the GB team lodge which sits very conveniently at the edge of the Olympic Park. It was a godsend last Sunday when there was torrential rain - you can watch BBC TV and you can make yourself a cup of normal tea! That green stuff kills me.
It has been interesting seeing how different sports operate and the pros and cons of the various methods.
For example divers on the GB Olympic programme train 24 hours a week and they are asked to make a contribution of just £50 a month for this.
Players in the GB women’s Olympic hockey programme must live within 10 miles of the training base at Bisham Abbey from March to September. Usually this means relocating to one of the most expensive areas in England.
They don't train/play full time so they have to have part-time or flexible jobs that can accommodate their training and competitive schedules. There is Lottery funding to assist them but this has been significantly cut in recent years, I'm told, because results have not been good enough.
While there's no cost to the players for their training or competition, there is equally no income so players can commit 4 (often 8) years to an Olympic campaign and have little to show for it if the team is unsuccessful. These are big sacrifices and big commitments.
I have just bumped into 3 young badminton players on Saturday who were out in Beijing as part of the Olympic ambition programme. That's a programme for preparing younger athletes for 2012.
They were all in their late teens and had spent a couple of days at the GB holding camp in Macau before heading to the Village for 2 nights. They were able to mix with the current GB shuttlers, watch other athletes preparing for events, sample the unique atmosphere of the Village and also watch the quarter and semi-finals of the badminton. This seems like a great idea as there is no substitute for getting kids close to their role models.