The evening was a fantastic celebration of a great year of Olympic sport especially triathlon with a gold and bronze by the Brownlees. The event saw all of the Olympic team members both men’s and women’s enter the hall to the applause and cheers of the attendees culminating in a standing ovation for Alistair Brownlee.
It was also great to see Chrissie Wellington speaking about her year out of competition and getting back to the basics of the sport and enjoying doing sport on an ad hock basis rather than a prescriptive training and competing programme for the love of sport.
Steve Cram was a guest presenter and interviewer. He showed his personal pictures of his experiences at the Olympic games which had everyone riveted and jealous of his perfect commentators position for all the athletics events.
Next up was the group and one to one interviews by Steve Cram on all the members of the men’s and women’s Olympic team running through when did you find out you were in, what was it like running up to the day, what happened during the race.
There was the obvious comments on Jonathan Brownlee’s penalty for mounting the bike too early in the Olympic triathlon. He clearly didn’t think it was him at the time as he was laughing to himself that Alistair had made a mistake yet again only to realise it was himself and shouted ‘It can’t be me I’ve never had a penalty in a race – ever! I can’t believe it!’ numerous expletives and the realization ‘I’m going to have to deal with this one.’ Of course, Alistair was very sympathetic as any older brother would be (i.e. not my problem!!!!)
A big question was what was more important the bronze in the Olympics or becoming the men’s world triathlon championship winner – Jonathans answer was firm and un shaken – ‘without any doubt or question Bronze in the Olympic games!‘
It was great interviewing and a great privilege to be there in such a wonderful year of sport. The interview could have gone on for many hours and nobody in the room would have complained it was that engrossing.
A fantastic year of sport, a fantastic year for triathlon, a great night out with wonderful food and Olympian company – not forgetting a triathlon specific goodie bag for each person who attended!
– David
