I was lucky enough to watch the gymnastics in the O2 yesterday, the atmosphere was fantastic, the whole event high energy and exciting to watch. This is the event I’ve seen on TV for years, and remember Olga Korbut and Nadia Comineci in the 1980s. It’s harder to watch in person as there are four groups of competitors doing four apparatus in rotation. The seating in the O2 goes upwards to the heavens, from TV you can’t even see the seats we were in.We looked down through the lighting scaffolding onto the scoreboard, but even so could enjoy the spectacle.

Below are some shots, although the floor was brightly lit, from our eagles perch and using my 18-200mm Nikon lens, with full zoom the aperture drops to f5.6, so needing ISO 1000 to keep the shutter speed at any reasonable level.

Click the photos to enlarge – have any of you been to an Olympic event?

The arena

US Fan

Young spectators

A precarious position to be in

I didn’t see this shot on TV ;-)

Strong US support

Concerned ladies watch the vault

All worthy winners