Medals Galore

Today was men's medal matches day at the seated Volleyball at North Paris Arena.

A later start as there were to be only 2 matches.

I had thought about going out earlier for some breakfast in a cafe, but by the time I'd motivated myself to go, I decided just to take a few photos of the hotel and more of the station, then get another of the cheese and ham "sandwich" and a hot chocolate, on the platform. (My room is the one next to the small red awning over the hotel entrance, with flags outside under the letters EL of the hotel. The metro entrance is to the far left of the picture, just visible, so I've not far to go to get my train in the morning)

There was a young man there trying to persuade the man in front of me to buy him a sandwich, he refused. He approached me and I initially feigned that I didn't understand, but then I thought hey what the heck, so I asked which one he wanted. It wasn't much if someone was genuinely hungry. After I paid, I turned to look for him and saw him sat with someone on the edge of the steps eating. He looked at me and I nodded back to him in return. If genuine I managed to help a little, and if just trying it on, well to be fair, it was less than a fiver.

Got onto the RER B and ended up getting to the stadium early so had time to sit in the volunteer room with the rest of the team. 😀

We found we hadn't been allocated roles for today, so we just all got stuck into doing whatever was needed. 

A delivery of fresh towels arrived, but they'd come by car so weren't taking the dirty ones away. To make room in our storage room, we moved the big full cage of dirty, smelly towels into a different storage area and Liz and I got folding the rest of the dirty towels so they'd take up less room, and when the new towels arrived, we used their plastic bag covers to stack the old towels in, so they too could go to storage.

We started to take some of the posters off the warm up room walls to roll them up, so they're then ready to be given to families and athletes. Many of them had been stuck with such powerful glue squares that we nearly ended up ripping many of them. 

Ines, our team leader, brought in some Slovenia button badges that her team insisted she gave to us all. Nice, as it's not really a work area we've had much contact for pin collecting. 

Our first and only game on our shift today, was the Bronze medal match between Egypt and Germany. Egypt were the team I had the accidental Team Liaison role with at the beginning.  Cheering them on from behind the scenes I was delighted that Egypt won in a very exciting 5 set match, 3 sets to 2.

I went to congratulate them and one of their managers gave me a great big sweaty hug and a kiss on the cheek and said thank you. 😊 I'm sure I helped them, though obviously not enough to get them to the Gold match.

The Iran and Bosnia teams arrived around the same time as the 2nd shift people. So Liz and I headed off to grab a drink and some food. Except they'd run out of chips. Pah!

Bought a few bits at the store on site and I managed to get a sitting volleyball t- shirt. Then I went to check on the results board, and noticed the Bronze results hadn't been put up, so I scuttled back to the athletes lounge and offered to do it. I'll check in the morning to see if the Gold match has been added as we know that Iran beat Bosnia by 3 sets to 1.

We did think about trying to watch the gold medal match but it didn’t feel right to stay on the courtside, nor to be in the athletes lounge, as Egypt athletes were using it before the medal ceremony.

So, we decided that we might as well head back to our respective digs and caught the RER which again was a faster train, getting back to Gare du Nord much quicker.

Once back didn't venture out again. In for the night, though not so early to sleep as a call from Whendie meant we spent ages chatting and catching up.

Last shift at the Volleyball on Saturday. Womens medal matches. At least another later start.