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Please note: The views expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Microsoft and/or the British Olympic Association.
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| Diary - Steve Tassell |
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I am an account manager at Microsoft, in my spare time I like skiing, rowing as well as coaching in fact any sport that isn’t cricket or darts or pool (anything boring!) Likes: England rugby team, fig rolls, the toxic video and anything involving Rachel Stevens. Dislikes: traffic jams, anything with Britney Spears in (except the toxic video) and the fact they took ‘Take Hart’ off air.
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| Tuesday 17 August |
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This morning I set off for the town centre to pick up our tickets for the Rowing. Originally the rowing was supposed to be on Tuesday morning which would have meant an early start to get there as it’s an hour a way and racing starts at 8:30 Greek time. However, because of the high winds the last couple of days a lot of the racing has been postponed, forecasters were predicting a lull Tuesday afternoon which sounds a lot more reasonable start time! So off I went to pick up the tickets from the local pick up point (they have ticket pick up points all over Athens where you can buy on the day or order online in advance). When I got there a sizeable queue was forming but eventually I got served.
Now Mike and myself it has to be said are fairly good at blagging (it is definitely an art form) and in this case we were no different. Just as we were wondering how we were going to get to the rowing lake via public transport one of the Javelin reps (Kathryn) walked through the door to see how things were going with the email and xbox room they helped setup. Having a car herself did mean she was a prime candidate for taking us to the rowing. Several blagging moments later and we had ourselves a lift the only trouble was we didn’t have a ticket for her and they’d completely sold out. Now I should mention at this point rowing can be a dull spectator sport. I should know I’ve rowed myself for over 15 years and now coach rowing so believe me when I say it can be dull to the uninitiated at least. So to hear that the rowing had sold out was a little surprising. Faced with the prospect of getting a lift from someone who had no chance of getting into the rowing herself we decided to chance it hoping worse case we’d get in but have to get the tube back as even being blaggers we couldn’t hope she’d hang around outside until we were ready to leave! We arrived there only to find the story was the same at the ticket office by the lake. The issue isn’t really that they’ve sold out of tickets what happens -as with most sporting events- is several ticket agents buy up a vast number of tickets, in doing this it makes it very hard for individuals to get tickets through the regular channels. Hence, events that appear to be sold out are in fact half empty most of the time. So to get to the lake and find they were still saying it was sold out was a surprise. Had our blagging juices dried up in the heat? One last try at the ticket office and amazingly just as the event was starting they opened up another area so we could buy another ticket! We settled down to some glorious weather at Lake Schinias and the prospect of Team GB qualifying for the semi-finals held on Wednesday and Thursday. In the end 3 of the four crews racing won through to the semi finals, marvellous!! A great afternoons racing and to celebrate we stopped at a very picturesque restaurant on the way back overlooking Lake Marathon. What a great end to a spectacular day.
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| Monday 16 August |
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Today started to feel like we were getting into some sort of routine. We have a daily morning meeting with Miriam who runs the lodge which is run with military precision. As I think Paul commented on last week everything is geared up to the athlete’s needs and so anything that gets in the way of helping them relax and get prepared for competition is managed and smoothed over. It’s great to see so much support go into creating just the right environment for the athletes.
I was talking to one of the Hockey coaches earlier as he’d brought into email area a massive Apple Macintosh G4 notebook. It’s state of the art stuff and I have to say pretty impressive technology! He uses it primarily to download video from all the matches Great Britain play. The software that he uses to edit it is very cool it’s basically the same technology they use to edit together play after football matches on the BBC. In any given match there might be defensive, attacking or set play they want to mark so they can watch them back all together with the attacking coach, for example. You can also overlay players footage so you can study hitting actions of different players and compare technique. This software at the top end costs £17K so you’d expect it to be good. We challenged him on why he didn’t use a PC to do this analysis. Part of the reason was the software for doing the analysis was better for the Mac’s but also he had found PC’s were less proficient when they used them in the past. He did say he’d prefer using a PC as that would stop them having to carry around two computers. He hadn’t encountered a Media Centre PC before so I set the challenge to prove we could deliver the same if not better performance than a Mac!
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| Sunday 15 August |
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After last nights silver in the diving Leon’s parents came into the lodge to meet up with Leon and Pete after their punishing media schedule. They got to see them briefly after the diving finished but had to wait until this morning to catch up with them properly. One of the other lodge helpers had picked them up this morning to take them to the BBC to be interviewed live on TV. He managed to take some photos of them with their medals so when he got back to the lodge we were able to download it and print them off for their parents whilst they were waiting to seem them. I think they really appreciated this given they hadn’t seen them since the competition. As you can imagine both sets of parents are absolutely chuffed to bits!
Mike spent most of this morning lying by the pool (a break from our original pact of both working the shifts together!) We raised our game for the afternoon though when HRH Princess Anne turned up for a tour. I think we bored her with talk of wi-fi, dongles and such like but she saw the benefit of having the internet facility especially as it’s almost impossible for most support staff for the athletes to get into the village this year. She an incredibly nice lady, very down to earth and clearly a massive sports fan, what an ambassador.
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| Saturday 14 August |
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Our first proper work day today…you can almost smell the pressure…I’d be lying if I said what we’re doing is particularly taxing or demanding on our time. Typically the people coming into the email area have prior knowledge of PC’s and have internet email already in most cases it’s just a question of helping them try out using tablet pc’s, getting on to Instant Messenger for the first time or if they have brought a laptop with them helping them get setup on the wi-fi network here. It doesn’t sound like much but because the context is sport related everyone we help makes me feel tremendously satisfied. Myself and Mike have spent quite a bit of time talking to the coaching staff today, one chap in particular is the head of the Trampoline Federation in the UK, he’s out here coaching the only male trampolinist we have (Gary Smith). It really helps him coach more effectively to be able to video Gary and show this back to him afterward. Using a laptop he can edit and slow down the action to show specific technique that needs work. They have support staff back in the UK that with a bit of investment in the infrastructure they could continue to support Gary whilst he’s training out here by sharing this video footage as well as other training information. The trouble is the kind of support they need is tiny in terms of IT infrastructure so most companies would probably pass over the opportunity to help out. It’s a real opportunity where Microsoft could help out and make a difference.
I’ll mention briefly the fact that Tony and Cherie Blair were here visiting today simply because I know Mike has written on this already. One funny incident that happened when I was showing Cherie the handwriting facility on the tablet pc she wrote an email to be sent to all the athletes within Team GB. When handing back to me the tablet she said in a rather motherly tone, “Now what will happen if you don’t save this?” to which I responded, “I’ll feel very silly!” realising as I uttered the words she was actually referring to how the mail would get sent given we weren’t in range of the network at the time.
We watched the guys compete in the synchronised diving competition this evening, it was real edge of the seat stuff. Hard luck for the girls but well done to the lads for coming second!
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| Friday 13 August |
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We arrived Friday amidst a 36 degree dry heat and surprisingly an uncluttered drive through to the lodge. Handing over for our week was Paul and John the guys that help setup the network the week before the games. We spent most of the afternoon settling in and getting to grips with working by the pool (wireless network permitting).
We sat and watched the opening ceremony this evening in the lodge with some of the support staff and athletes that are competing in the first couple of days. Most noteworthy were Tandi Gerrard and Jane Smith and Peter Waterfield and Leon Taylor the Women’s and Men’s 3 metre synchronised springboard athletes respectively. We also met Leon’s parents who had driven for an hour just to get to the lodge! Because the accommodation in Athens has been booked up for months finding suitable accommodation nearby that’s not too expensive has been almost impossible for all the family and friends, at least they have somewhere they can come to meet up when the athletes aren’t competing. In that respect we’ve received much praise for the facilities provided by the lodge I believe as well with Microsoft sponsoring the lodge this year the internet access and gaming room has been a real hit. Simple things like being able to help people download their photos and print them off or email them to friends has been a big help and great to see the enjoyment derived from such a simple task.
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