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William's 2012 Olympic Blog - 4
Goodness – where do I start?! The Olympics is a very different experience. Everyone here clearly takes sport pretty seriously and if you take sport seriously (of course that is debatable) it is likely that you’ll see the Olympics as one of the pinnacles of sport. There is a real sense of occasion being here in London and competing at such a major event.
The Aussie uniform is fantastic and my favourite of all the 3 Commonwealth Games and 2 Olympics I’ve previously been to. Adidas are the sports sponsor and Sportscraft has down the formal wear. It all fits perfectly and looks great. I feel very proud to pull on the team uniform and see the Australian coat of arms and Olympic rings on the breast. It is one of the absolute highlights for me.
The food hall is absolutely enormous. I will try to get some photos that do it justice. The amount of diverse options seems a little less than I remember at past Olympics but there is still plenty to choose from. I’ve mainly been going for the pasta or the Asian sections, although the prawn sticks were hard to beat.
The room we are staying in could certainly not have been designed for three adults to sleep in. I've attached a photo of what it looked like when we moved in!! It's a bit better now that we have packed out stuff away but you can't turn around without bumping into something.
Being at the Olympics is very busy. You are almost always rushing off to either training, competition, physio treatment, massage, recovery (ice baths) or doing some of the other chores like washing. Today is the first day in the week I’ve been in London that I have had time to sit and scratch...
The Australian Olympic Committee does a phenomenal job of making the athletes feel proud to be there and inspiring them to achieve their best at the Olympics. You receive every possible piece of help and support you could ask for and everyone goes out of their way to help you. The positivity of the support staff is inspiring to me and I will strive to emulate their level of professionalism and support in my own life.
One of the highlights was a performance by John Farnham at the team welcoming ceremony. Carried out in lavish circumstances at Frank Lowy’s new Westfield complex next to the village (that shopping centre is absolutely enormous!!) the ceremony went for a couple of hours. I tell you what –John still has it. His final final last final farewell tour could be on the horizon…
My heart sank a little when I first saw my singles draw. I had been drawn against the top Hungarian Adam Pattantyus who is about 50 places ahead of me on the ranking (80 in the world). He is a chopper with a strong forehand attack. However I have lost to him three times in the past eight months and his style suits me particularly poorly. Out of the 16 players I could have faced I was hoping to avoid him and gave myself a 10-15% chance of winning. However playing at the Olympics is different and I spent the full two days before our match trying to convince myself that I could this time. I had been feeling exceptionally good in training for the couple of days training we had done in London after I started tapering off my training load. For me it is a matter of putting the pieces back together after a few weeks of very hard training; getting my head and body feeling fresh and getting the small, intricate details like serve, return and first attack right.
My ultimate fear was to come to the Olympics and bomb out. To have all the sacrifices and hard work of the past 18 months mean nothing. To let down all those who had so kindly supported and donated to me so that I could follow my dream of performing well at a 3rd Olympics.
I felt nervous before my first match. Less than at previously Olympics but still enough to have a stomach ache and upset tummy – usual symptoms of nerves. Adam looked nervous too. ttEDGE partner Robert Frank and I had studied Adam on video for a couple of hours the night before probing for weaknesses that could help me the next day. We found several holes that I had not been able to find in my previous matches. He seemed to recover poorly when one shot was played wide and the next shot was played fast to the middle. We thought it would be crucial to mix the placement up a great deal. Any time more than 2 shots were played to the same position on the table, he became a massive favourite to win the point.
My memories of the match are hazy – I get like that when I am extremely focused. And I have been extremely extremely focused here in London. I was fortunate to win the 1st set 13-11 after he missed a couple of easy shots at the end. I could sense he was nervous and making a few more errors than I would have expected. I won the next set comfortably and then led 10-9 in the 3rd. We had a massive point where I was running him all over the court and I did a big smash. He chopped sideways on the ball right from the back of the court and I saw the ball come swirling towards me with a huge amount of spin. It missed the table by a couple of cm’s and thank goodness it did – I wouldn’t have gotten it back. He won the next set but I took the 5th set and the match 11-9. I was overjoyed to have won the match. It was such a great, great feeling and my German coach Jens Lang even got a big wet kiss on the cheek in front of the cameras.
I was on a massive high but tried to keep calm and focus on my match the next day against world number 39 Jaoa Monteiro from Portugal. His level is definitely another step up again and he is a very, very good player. I had trained a decent amount with him at the Werner Schlager Academy in Vienna and usually lost as one would expect. Rob, Jens and I studied him the night before and worked out our plan of attack. I knew it would be important to play aggressively on his serve and try to flick as often as I could. I felt confident I had a chance if I was able to stay close to the table and keep the play to his backhand.
I was feeling very few nerves before the match and was unusually happy and talkative. I got wasted 11-2 in the first set. I did not receive well enough and against that level of player you stand no chance when that happens. He got the first attacks and was able to dominate the play. I was really going for my shots in the rallies and I had 5 or 6 near misses off really good topspins. I wasn’t dejected after the 1st set and knew I had to keep believing in my game plan and keep going for my shots. Something happened. I started winning! He was having problems with the new serve I’ve been working on – kind of a tomahawk serve from the wide backhand that goes to the wide forehand of the left hander and curls inwards. He made quite a few errors or gave me good chances to attack. In addition I was flicking his serve strongly and really going after my backhand topspin. I took the next 3 sets in very similar fashion and suddenly had a 3-1 lead!!
I lost 5% of intensity in the 5th set and that is not good enough to win. I lost 11-6 and felt ‘ok this is my time now and I have to do this’. I took a 5-1 lead, 7-3 and then he started coming back at me. Good players always come back at you which is one of the reasons they are good players. All of a sudden I was 8-9 down and then 9-10 down. I didn’t feel stressed or nervous at all in that situation. Just focused. I changed my serve to do a short tomahawk serve from the middle to his forehand – the first time for the match. I won the next two points and had my first match point! I did the same serve again, topspun once (or it might have been twice) and his shot went long!
It was an unbelievable feeling. I can’t describe it in words. I had worked so hard for that exact moment. I’d just had the best win of my career, at the Olympic Games no less, and felt on top of the world. I remember jumping high. I’ve seen a couple of photos and it looks like I got some real air time! By then my body felt numb and the half lap around the hall on the way to the media zone (the crowd applauds you the whole way around) was just phenomenal.
I think that’s enough for this one. Next blog up tomorrow :-)
