Summer turns up just in time for the Olympic sailing

My Olympic sailing tickets were the ones that excited me most.  Despite the wettest spring and summer on record, I had a dream.  Seaside.  Sun.  Sails.  It would be just like the Caribbean, but a day trip from Basingstoke.

Unlikely, but that's pretty much the way it turned out.

Sailing may not be the best spectator sport (it is often hard to tell what's going on), but it wins the general atmosphere prize.  Start with pure, natural beauty.  The little beach town of Weymouth sits on a bay sheltered by the peninsula of Portland to the south.  White cliffs topped by emerald green gazing land stretch to the east.  A stretch of public gardens called The Nothe, built around a Victorian fort, served as the viewing grandstand.  While you could see the races from many points on the coast this bit had been fenced, secured, wired with jumbo screens and sound and provided with lots of amenities.  That's what spectators got for their £55 tickets.  That ... and the fact that the race course was directly in front of you.

Sun and warmth is no good for sailing without wind, of course, and we got lucky there.  It was the finals of the women's Elliot 6m.  (Basically, small yachts, crewed by teams of three, in head-to-head competition rather than sailing in a big group.)  A stiff breeze blowing inland made for what commentators called the trickiest sailing of the tournament.  For spectators, that meant thrills and spills like one boat literally stealing the wind out of another's sails, the Australian captain getting pitched into the water and the spinnakers, emblazoned with national flags, showily full as the boats headed towards us on the straightaway before the finish.  We watched the Finns beat the Russians for the Bronze before the Australians lost to the Spaniards in the gold medal round.

Though rebranded from yachting to sailing in the past decade to make it more egalitarian, there's no denying this is at the posh end of the Olympic spectrum.  At the top of the Nothe Gardens stood a purpose-built bar, decked out like yachting watering holes the world over, serving up jugs of Pimm's and bottles of chilled white wine as fast as the boats were zipping across the water below.  The food stands also went upscale.  You could choose from spit-roast porchetta on ciabatta, chicken and chorizo wraps or organic beef burgers.

Amusing.  And a relief from the usual big event junk food.  (An even bigger relief that we weren't forced to endure global sponsor McDonald's high fat fiesta.)  But it does emphasise one unfortunate fact of these Olympics.  There may be some heart warming stories about athletes from the wrong side of the tracks, and I've heard stories about getting school children from poor schools to experience the excitement.  But what I've witnessed after three events, most obviously at the sailing, is a resolutely upper middle class experience.  Which is no surprise.  The only way to get tickets was online, with a Visa card.  While tickets came in a range of prices, the £50 to £100 range wasn't unusual.  Add in transport.   Around £30 a head for us to get up to London for events ... though your ticket did come with a London transport pass once you got inside the M25 ... and £50 each for us to get down to Weymouth.  And then there's the food and drink while you're there.  Add in a souvenir programme for £10 and a tee shirt.  The most basic is £18 but you can get that at Sainsbury's; most of the nice shirts were £30.  You get the idea.  This was not an outing for the cash strapped.

I'll let the organising committee wring their hands over that one.  Back on the lawn at The Nothe, I was soaking up the sun, revelling in the atmosphere and thinking that a day out at the seaside doesn't get much better than this.  Hard to believe that today, it all comes to a close.  Years of anticipation and it was all over in a flash.  I'm so glad I got to take part.  Especially in the sunny bit.