My exciting experience of becoming a London 2012 Olympic Games maker all began about a week ago when I was invited to take part and help out with the Olympic test events. I was selected to help within the excel arena, as an athlete services member for none other than the Boxing section, typical!

Eager and excited, my first day consisted of a venue and role briefing with training in the specific areas me and the other games makers would be working on, not only were we given loads of freebies such as Addidas t shirts/jackets with boxing badges and accreditation, couldn’t complain, we were also introduced to our team leaders, some of the Olympic team and even met some famous boxers! I couldn’t wait to get cracking on the events. A bit of shopping and sightseeing whilst in London wasn’t to go a miss!

The test events:

On the days of the test events, the atmosphere was buzzing! Myself and my team would arrive at the venue, check in and get the area set up and ready for the boxers. As an athlete services team member I had to ensure the boxers were signed in, allocated to their specific changing room and warm up areas, ensure that they had everything they needed, assisting with taking them to the ring when their match was up, and also walking them from the ring and taking them to get checked by the doctors. Not only did I get to see boxers from 21 different countries fight in the ring and get to see some potential future Olympic champions, I was also able to chat to the boxers and get to know them, obviously pure banter!

The days were long but went quickly with the amount of duties and roles we had to carry out. Our team leader, Darren Langley – former boxer! ensured we rotated within our team and all experienced different aspects and areas of the test events. My favourite part was walking the boxers from the ring, and my not so favourite was cleaning their sweaty and blood covered gloves!

I made some great friends and met some interesting people whilst working at the Excel, who were all brilliant at their jobs and full of passion and enthusiasm for the games next summer – If the Olympic games go anything like the test events, they are sure to be spectacular and well ran events which definitely will take your breath away!

I managed to take a few sneaky shots also… enjoy!