When Sir Steve Redgrave met his knitted twin
3 August 2012
“My name is Marion Watson and I am the Quality Assurance Manager at the Wellcome Trust-McMichael Clinical Research Facility on the Hammersmith Campus. I have volunteered at numerous events in the past including the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Millenium youth conference and garden party for 5,000 young adults.
Gamesmaker training for the Olympics was fairly general so I arrived on site for the first day not really knowing what I was expected to do. I am based at the rowing in Eton Dorney near Windsor working in press operations. The problem is I have no relevant experience! They recruited experienced rowers (not me) plus teachers and lecturers, with the expectation of our being good communicators (only my past students can comment on that).
I am working in one of the areas where the rowers meet the press so I’ve seen most of the athletes, but we rarely speak to them and certainly can’t ask for autographs or take photographs. Journalists are under pressure to get reports out quickly so it is fairly hectic at times – passing messages, keeping authorised journalists in the press zone and keeping others out. We are all out in the open but have been fairly lucky with only light rain so far. You might think that rowing would not be affected by rain, after all there is a lot of water around but rain often comes with blustery winds which can delay the races – luckily that hasn’t happened so far this week.
Highlights for me so far are seeing past rowing greats Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent (he really is huge!) and James Cracknell, guiding medal winners to press conferences including our first gold Olympians Heather Stanning and Helen Glover, holding a real Olympic torch and hearing the crowd cheer. An amazing wall of sound hits you almost physically when the rowers reach the spectator stands.
In recent months, along with other Gamesmakers, I have been making “knitteds” to raise money for charities including Get Kids Going – a national charity which gives disabled children and young people the opportunity of participating in sport. My ‘knitteds’ include Eddie Izzard which sold on eBay for a generous £31. At the moment I have ‘Knitted Sir Steve Redgrave’ on eBay for Sport Relief. Big Sir Steve was amused and happy to pose – I hope he does well for a good cause as I will be sorry to give him up!
The rowing finishes on Saturday but we are still needed for the canoe sprint next week – so the hard work isn’t over yet!”
Tags: London 2012
Posted in College, Your Voice | 1 Comment »
One Response to “When Sir Steve Redgrave met his knitted twin”
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Beth says:
I love learning about the knitteds — they are so cute and what a wonderful cause to support. Good luck in the auction!
