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Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures - part 10 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

by Ian Cook Published 01/10/2012

China's Weiyang Guo on the parallel bars .

You obviously could not be in more than one place at a time. What was the incident you most wished you had been at?

I had a couple of free days in my schedule, these were not free days but days to cover different sports to expand our coverage. As the games went on my schedule changed, depending on who was doing well and looked like medal candidates, etc. I did plan to cover rowing and canoeing but that just never happened and we had success in both so I am a bit gutted I missed those. One of the funny memories I have of the Olympics. is the call of my editor Steve White joking to me saying:

"Can't you split myself in two as we have a hope in the rowing" As I was on my own it was just impossible to cover everything. Looking forward to Rio, I'm hoping there are more of us, so I'll get to cover a few more sports.

How did you find the opening and closing ceremonies?

I did not manage to cover the opening ceremony but I did get to cover the closing ceremony. It was a let-down for me in a photographic sense, my position was up in the back row in the stands, so close to the roof I could almost touch it; I was in line with the flame and the stage was at the opposite end, a useless position in many respects. One: if I wanted to photograph anything on the Union Jack, centre stage I couldn't, due to the heat haze that was coming from the flame. Two: they had a phoenix hanging from the roof by cables which cluttered all images, and for the fireworks I was way too high up to get anything different.

I even asked if I could go down to the middle of the stand just for the fireworks and was told no. So I found it very frustrating on that front.

As I said to the photo marshal, I'm not here to enjoy the show I'm here to record it.

• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 1
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 2
  
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• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 10
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 11
  
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