Olympics impact

Spending an evening in the Olympic Stadium for the first time is a close-up sports overload, writes Brian Byrne.

There's just so much goes on all at once, it's hard to take it all in, even with the help of big screens at either end of the stadium.

And then there are all the activities that aren't directly sporting, but are essential to the operation of the events.

For somebody like me, who wouldn't normally attend large sporting events, the most immediate impact is the charged atmosphere that comes from having more than 70,000 dedicated sports fans all in the one place.

In my case I was one of 4,000 guests which BMW hosted through the two weeks of the most important and wide ranging sporting events of every four years.

The events for the evening included Decathlon high jumping, mens javelin, men's 110m hurdles, and womens 400m track, and everything seemed to be running all at once, alongside periodic medals presentation events which didn't necessarily relate to the competitions of the evening.

One of the many surprises to me was the spectator involvement in the various events, chanting as a competitor runs up for the high jump, for instance. This doesn't come across on TV coverage, which focuses our concentration on individual events. Being there makes one realise just how much an athlete has to be able to tune out everything around him or her and concentrate on the job in hand.

There's a lot of musical mood management too, with a range of songs constantly dropped in between and under events. 'Don't Stop Me Now' followed on from one of the womens event heats, encouraging those who had got through to the next level.

The extraordinary choreography of the track workers as they placed and removed hurdles was a bit like looking at synchronised swimming, and almost an Olympic event in itself.

But from a motoring writer's perspective, one of the cutest elements were several quarter-scale radio-controlled Mini cars scooting around the centre of the scenes of play. Last night they were being used to ferry back the thrown javelins to their owners. A magnificent example of product placement and advanced technology.

There's just so much to process. But there's only one conversation subject among the Irish here today, after seeing Katie Taylor win through to her silver medal yesterday afternoon. Will she make the gold this evening?

Like the rest of the country, we'll be shouting for her, but at Heathrow Airport on our way home. There's a poster campaign here at the moment, 'If you shout loud enough at your TV screen, they'll hear you'.

Gate 88 at Heathrow could be a very noisy place indeed at 4.45pm.