The excitement of competing in the Olympics after years of hard graft was not enough to wake up two young athletes, who both admit sleeping through their alarm clocks before their events.
The British weightlifter Jack Oliver, 21, revealed he had intended to be up at 6am ahead of his competition at London 2012, but an hour later was still in bed. “I was meant to be up at six o’clock, go downstairs and have a nice pre-weigh-in shower and a bit of a stretch,” he said. “But at five past seven I hear a banging on the door, looked at my phone and thought ‘I’m in trouble!’” Oliver said he “got dressed in 30 seconds”, managed to catch a later bus to the ExCeL arena and arrived in time for the weigh-in. He then went on to produce his best ever performance in front of a delighted home crowd.
On Saturday, the Australian teenage shooter Alethea Sedgman told the Sydney Morning Herald how she had made the same mistake, bypassing the 5am alarm which was meant to wake her for her 10m air rifle event.
The 18-year-old, who missed a spot in the gold-medal final by 10 points at the Royal Artillery Barracks, said she had pressed the snooze button for “five more minutes’’ — and was woken by her roommate an hour and 10 minutes later.
{{/usCountry}}The 18-year-old, who missed a spot in the gold-medal final by 10 points at the Royal Artillery Barracks, said she had pressed the snooze button for “five more minutes’’ — and was woken by her roommate an hour and 10 minutes later.
{{/usCountry}}‘Curse of Cameron’
Wonder who Britons are blaming for the poor show so far by their athletes in the London Olympics?
It's “curse of Cameron”. Upset British fans are blaming it on Prime Minister David Cameron, claiming the whenever he has shown up to watch matches so far in the ongoing Olympics, the team Great Britain has lost.