by Stuart Weir
European Indoors – The Good, the bad and the other
Good
It was a good meet in so many ways – great arena, good crowds, great atmosphere.
It was a Royal occasion with King Willem-Alexander attending
First time I have ever been served a coffee by a monkey! Good to get the mascot working.
A free pair of shoes for me from Joma.
It was a great moment when British Athlete, Jeremiah Azu did his post-victory interview in Dutch – not many people knew that he had spent his early years in Netherlands.
It was great to see Lieke Klaver win the 400 – a great athlete but often in the shadow of Femke.
The atmosphere was magnificent, especially when Netherlands were winning medals.
Bad
When Max Hess recorded 17.43 in the triple jump, the stadium announcer described it as “an amazing jump”. Remember the days when you had to reach 18m for it to be good, let alone amazing?
The stadium announcer needs to stop exaggerating. I have told her so millions of times.
Too many stars of European Athletics absent – but who can blame them with a European and World Indoors this month and a World outdoors in September?
Most crass comment: When Jakob Ingebrigtsen overtook George Mills, the stadium announcer said: “George Mills, can you keep up?”
The term “Put hands together for” is a slang expression for applause. When a jumper wanted slow rhythmic calling, inviting the crowd to put their hands together, was not the right thing to say.
Transport back to hotels for teams, media etc was chaotic on the first night.
Other
With the event having problems with transport it was ironic that one of the sponsors’ slogan was “moving people”
The arena is dominated by the cycle racing track which made the it look empty from some angles.
Yannik Wolf 60m did not make the final – keeping wolf from the door?
Quotable quotes
“Competing at 10.00am is hard because we are not caffeined up the way I usually am for competition. “, Scott Lincoln
“I ran from my hotel to the arena with my brother. “, Jakob Ingebrigtsen
I totally understand, Jakob. The buses were a bit unreliable!
