Well we are finally up and running.  Team Ireland arrived in to the Olympic Village and was immediately impressed.  The Village is simply amazing with excellent accommodation blocks, food hall resident centres etc.  In short this Olympic Village is as good as it gets.  We travelled overnight with minimal fuss and arrived at about 11:00h on Sunday 7th.  We flashed through the Welcome Tent as we already (at least most of us) had our Accreditation validated in the airport.  Once settled in D7 (accom block which we are sharing with Venezuela and Fiji) we explored the Village and tried to stay awake for as long as possible to try and get back in to a regular sleep pattern.

Scott had some treatment on various sore bits from the expert physios. Sarah Jane and Enda.  Chloe decided to have a little snooze and regretted it when she woke 6 hours later!  Jim sleeps like a man with nothing on his conscience.  He went to bed at 14:00h, woke at 23:00h for a little while and went back to sleep and got up at 07:00h for training. 

This morning we headed over to the practice hall in Chaoyang Gymnasium and after a little blip in getting there, we arrived in to a hall that could easily host a World Championship.  It is a super practice hall.  We were the first to arrive so were greeted by a very warm welcome.

An hour and a half later we finished up and the guys seemed better for clearing out the cobwebs and are looking forward to increasing the intensity of training.  Tonight is a gym session with the real hard badminton work commencing tomorrow.

The draw was carried out yesterday and it certainly is an interesting one.  Chloe has been drawn against Kati Tolmoff of Estonia.  A tough match against a player ranked higher than Chloe but Chloe is certainly looking forward to that challenge.  Scott plays Marc Zwiebler of Germany in a repeat of the Irish International semi final where the German had the upper hand.  Scott is definitely looking to reverse that result.

And now many more of the team has arrived into the Village with cyclists, swimmers, rowers, canoeists.  Each has their own issues and problems to solve but each equally focussed on their own performance.

The atmosphere will change as the travel fatigue decreases and the attention turns towards the competition.  I have no doubt as to how intense some of our athletes will be and I am looking forward to seeing them compete.

We wish them well.