A mightily uplifting experience!

After the last two days of watching the men's and then the women's Olympic cycling road races for free from a road-side location in Putney, today we attended the only Olympic event for which we actually managed to buy tickets successfully in the frankly bizarre lottery through which London 2012 Olympic tickets were allocated.

We began our day very early, travelling to the ExCel conference halls in East London to watch a couple of sessions of Olympic weightlifting. This photo tries to convey the epic scale on which the competition took place - I'm delighted that we were able to watch and cheer (with the noisy and enthusiastic audience) the first British weightlifter to take part so far in these Olympic games, 18 year old Zoe Smith, born in East London close to where we were today, who was taking part in the Women's 58kg event. This photo shows the 5 foot tall Smith (a tiny figure in this vast arena) successfully completing her third and final clean-and-jerk lift (the second half of a weightlifting competition), in doing which, she broke the British record. She finished 12th overall in the end but is definitely one to watch for the next Olympic Games in Rio in 2016. We also watched the Men's 62kg event which I would characterise as tiny men with giant barbells. Incredible stuff, lifting weights greater than mine and my wife's weights combined!

Our viewing experience wasn't as difficult as this photo would suggest. There were also giant screens and, while my wife watched with binoculars, I used the long telephoto lens on my Canon SLR (although this one was taken on the phone camera for ease of blip posting).