Low key: Serbia and Croatia played to a small crowd at the basketball test event (Photo: ACTION IMAGES)
It wasn’t Great Britain’s 82-60 defeat against a star studded France at the Olympic Basketball Arena that left me a little frustrated last night – I had predicted a 15-point margin and until the final three minutes or so I was pretty spot on – rather it was the perennial disappointment of sport in a stadium only 25 per cent full.
Not that it was anybody’s fault. Nearly a year out from the Games, the Olympic Park is still a 24/7 building site and health and safety issues reign supreme, and rightly so.
It’s frantic out there – it reminds me of being in Hong Kong during one of its incredible building booms in the 1990s – and as I departed at 11.30pm last night the pace if anything seemed to be picking up under the floodlights.
The result is that every player, official, fan, caterer, toilet cleaner and journalist had to be carefully bussed in and out of the arena yesterday and that meant the decsion was made long ago to restrict the capacity this week to just 3,000.
Anymore would be practically impossible, especially getting people out at night in time to make the last train home.
It’s all very logical and sensible of course and the primary purpose of an Olympic test event is to test the ‘field of play’ and technology but as every sports fan knows supporters rattling around in huge stadia never works, rather in the way that coastal resorts are never at their best in the dead of winter.
Even the PA announcer sounds tinny and echoes around the place. Twenty-thousand at Twickenham, 6,000 at Lord’s, 4,000 on Centre Court – the result will always be the same.
The Olympic Basketball Arena can accommodate 12,000 fans and basketball supporters are generally among the noisiest on earth, certainly if my experience of various Slovenians, Greeks and Spaniards is anything to go by. Especially the Slovenians who neck more beer per man than any rugby crowd I have witnessed including the Irish in full flow.
Come the Olympics proper the Basketball Arena will be rocking – you only have to look around and use an ounce of imagination to appreciate that – and there wil be the usual array of dancing girls and acrobats during the break to whip the atmosphere up further but last night the atmosphere it was flat to say the least.
Every session this week is sold out – i.e. the 3,000 tickets available have been snapped up – but it doesn’t do the arena justice and some London-based Serbians and Croats who had got hold of tickets – disappeared for a drink and something to eat after their match ended.
The lack of intensity affected Great Britain the most, their young developing squad are trying to play catch-up and they need the adrenalin lift of a home crowd in full swing to lift them to the next level on occasions.
It was also their extreme bad luck to find themselves facing an exceptionally classy French outfit first up.
The French,who were groaning with NBA stars past and present, were on a mission and don’t be in the slightest bit surprised if they don’t bag a decent medal at next summer’s Olympics.
They need to qualify first of course but they are on the case in a big way having decided to put all their eggs in one basket and field the strongest possible team at the Eurobasket championships in Lithuania in a fortnight’s time.
Reach the final there and they won’t have to bother playing in the qualifying tournament next spring, an event that can be nearly as difficult as the Olympics themselves.
Great Britain meanwhile have it all to do with Croatia next up followed by Serbia.
If they can produce the teamwork and spark they displayed in the first half against France they could go close although a win against either would be a shock at this stage.
China and Australia at the weekend are more realistic targets and you suspect that coach Chris Finch will use his starting five more extensively and of course by then Luol Deng should be easing his way back into action.
All the action on Saturday August 20 and Sunday August 21 will be streamed exclusively live at telegraph.co.uk/olympics including Team GB’s fixtures against China and Australia.
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