Anna Flanagan - Officially Olympians!!

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Category: Anna Flanagan

We just played our first game against NZ and unfortunately lost 1-0. We are more determined than ever to beat Germany on Tuesday to keep the Olympic dream alive.

However, since my last post of arriving in a spa retreat for a few days, we have got up to a fair bit in the village. After returning extremely relaxed and ready to get back into training and play our last practice game against Korea, we had a number of welcoming ceremonies to get to.

Firstly, we had an official flag raising ceremony from the London Village Mayor and the National Youth Theatre. We got dressed up in our formal wear for the first time, and walked down to the international section where clowns and colorfully dressed people ushered us into a group whilst dancing and chanting: “I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.”

Official Flag Raising

Formal getup

Although nothing like what we expected, it was extremely entertaining and inspiring. The mayor said a few words and we sang our national anthem, and then the group of colorful people sang and danced for us some more as we watched on in awe at the cool spectacle.

From there, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the busy food hall before making our way over to the Australian Olympic Committee reception to welcome all the Aussie athletes and announce the flag bearer for the opening ceremony.

Now if we thought our other welcome was awesome… this was something else! We walked to the massive Westfield where the reception was being held and were greeted by Aussie fans singing Waltzing Mattilda as we entered into the room of old Olympic icons, sponsors, and the media.

Overwhelmed by all the amazing sports stars in the crowd I did not know who to go ask for a photo first! The star stalking was on after I got my first photo with the nice channel seven weather guy James Tobin, followed by, Bernard Tomic, Lleyton Hewitt, Rove, Liz Cambridge, Geoff Huegil, Grant Hackett, Dawn Fraser, Mathew Mitcham… just to name a few!

Lleyton Hewitt!

Hey Rove!

Eddie Maguire was hosting the night and it was all feeling very surreal because I was so ridiculously star struck the entire time.

Lauren Jackson was deservedly named the flag bearer (go Canberra!) with such an amazing career behind her and hopefully another medal to come at these Olympics.

Lauren Jackson as she receives the flag

Once the speeches were done, none other than Johnny Farnham treated us to a stellar performance! The hockey girls got prime position and a high five from the man himself.

Johnny Farnham!

As we were walking out we strolled past a group of people when Emily Smith exclaimed “Oh. My. God” we turned around and I literally screamed as we were looking at Roger Federer. He was more than happy to get a photo with us as we stood next to him in disbelief.

ROGER FEDERER

The other girls went back to the apartment, but Ash Nelson and I went to get a cupper at the dining hall before bed and saw another large group of people…. This time surrounding the dream team! It was all getting too much for one night so we skipped the photo opportunity on this occasion.

The next day we again had training and the opening ceremony that night. Because of our game being early, and training the next day, we chose not to march in the ceremony. We still got dressed up and went down to see the athletes off and I was really excited to see fellow Canberra athletes Melissa Breen and Lauren Boden before they did the walk.

After the Aussie team left, Laurie Lawerence led the athletes not going on a ‘village march’ carrying our emu statue around the centre of the village.

Emu march!

It was very funny and extremely random but we all had a good laugh and a lot of fun singing around the Olympic Rings together with Laurie chanting “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” all the while.

We then got into a pajamas, took our beanbags down to the big screen sheet they set up for us, and resumed prime viewing position before an early bed.

Go Australia!

The next two days were filled with nerves and more final game preparations for the following morning and some last minute Skype time with the parents.

Mum and Dad after our first game

We will be ready for game two against Germany and will give it everything we have.

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