FOR all the talk of cycling, swimming and even handball, the athletics is many people’s Olympic highlight, and the park was packed out from early this morning.

The park, which holds an enormous TV screen, was the perfect place to catch your first view of Jessica Ennis if, like most of us, you didn’t manage to get a ticket.

With barely a blade of grass visible beneath a huge crowd of families, many clad in Union Jack flags, the atmosphere was electric for Ennis’s appearances in the heptathlon.

But athletics aside, where better to watch Atkins and Grainger storm their way to rowing gold?

Even a two-minute monsoon could not dampen the spirits of the people transfixed by the action.

Damian Guy, 38, came down with his young family to see the park for himself. “We‘ve seen some swimming already, but today we just wanted to come down and be a part of it.”

“London has such a good atmosphere at the moment, you need to enjoy it while you can before everyone’s miserable again,” he laughed.

When the national anthem played for our champion rowers, the crowd rose to their feet and sang along, while bronze medallist Alan Campbell, who looked a broken man, was cheered on as Steve Redgrave helped him get to the podium.

A brief appearance by swimmer Hannah Miley on the park stage was greeted with the kind of applause reserved for rockstars, appropriate as she talked us through what she listens to on her iPod before a race (Skillrex and Pendulum, if you‘re interested).

With the weekend on the horizon and tomorrow being billed as Super Saturday, the perfect chance is coming to get yourself some big screen Olympic atmosphere whether at the park itself or at London’s many live sites. Don’t miss it.

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