At the Olympics

Olympics diary from our girl in Beijing

Published Date: 16 August 2008
By Laura Crothers

SCARBOROUGH'S Olympic poolside reporter has sent an exclusive diary of this week's events including smashed world records and British success stories.

Sarah Hill, 32, from Newby, has been watching first hand as the excitement of the opening week of the Olympic Games unfolds in the pool.Miss Hill, who is a teacher at St Peter's Primary School and a swimming coach at Scarborough's indoor pool, has now been in Beijing for three weeks as a representative for British Swimming.She was hand picked to go to the games to help out with the open water swimming events, as well as picking up ideas and strategies for organisers of the 2012 London Olympic games swimming events.

Each week Miss Hill has sent us her diary so she can share with Evening News readers her experiences of the Olympic games. As the excitement built for Rebecca Adlington's 800m race this morning we received this report yesterday:

Week 3
Beijing Olympic DiaryI am sat watching the women's three-metre springboard preliminaries as I type.It has been a quite amazing week in the water cube. I can't count the number of world records that I have seen broken, the number of athletes who have come so close but not quite far enough and the true range of emotions you feel, even as a spectator, when the National Anthem begin.The success of the two British girls earlier in the week was something that none of us expected.Rebecca also looked extremely confident in the heats of the 800m free last night. I think and hope she can make it her second British gold tomorrow morning.The US team is just amazing!! I cannot write an Olympic Diary without mentioning Michael Phelps.He is a truly phenomenal athlete. He can quite easily qualify for two finals within an hour of each other, usually breaking the Olympic Record each time. He has become the greatest Olympian of all time and it has been a privilege and an honour to see him and every single athlete competing for their country.

My event – the 10k Open water, happens next week. I will be moving from the cube out to the Shunji Canoeing and Rowing Lake – another spectacular venue. We have three British contenders in this race so hopefully a medal will come our way there too.

On a different note – I have been celebrity spotting whilst I have been out here!! Sir Clive Woodward, President Bush, Sir Steven Redgrave, Sharon Davis and Mark Austin to name a few.However the icing on the cake has to be a tie between Phelps walking past me the other morning on his way to train and the gorgeous James Cracknell eating his dinner in the same restaurant as us last night. I think he saw us gawping, but we tried our best to act cool!

I have also been out into the Olympic Green, to find a McDonalds I might add, but took lots of photos of the area around the stadium and the cube.