please empty your brain below

Commentary Radio? What? First i've heard of it.

If LOCOG had spent enough effort trying to sell these as much as they told you that the "quickest" way back to central London was via West Ham, I'd have bought one ...
As you have said before - info on the day is very poor. A simple programme sheet would have been helpful showing what events were taking place a what time.
I went to the Olympic / Paralympic events on nearly 20 occassions and didn't realise there was a radio service. When you go to the Open Golf or Wimbledon it's quite clear there is a service , where you can buy radios or what frequency you can tune in your own radio.
I went to Excel on Saturday, and the commentary radio was very handy for the table tennis, and had by far the best commentators, who added loads of insight and background to what we were seeing.

Commentary for the Goalball was obviously intended for blind spectators as it was an audio description of what was happening, with no time to add any comment.

Annoyingly, nobody seemed to be commentating the Boccia (we had the right channel as the announcements came through clearly)
I only noticed the radios because DG had mentioned that they were available. For working out what was on, where and when, the official iPhone app was invaluable. British team here, gold medal match there. Particularly as details of some matches were only available shortly before they began.

Top tip: take a small child in a buggy. We were ushered into the fast lane for the mobility impaired and jumped many queues. Keeping them entertained and relatively quiet is another matter!
We were awfully lucky with the commentary radios -- friends had gone to the Olympic dressage, where everyone had to keep quiet, and noticed part way through the day that radios were available, and whined about how badly marketed they were to us.

So when we went to the quiet-as-churchmice goalball, we knew to buy radios and get commentary. Not that you really need commentary for goalball, but it was sort of nice to have. I'm sure they could have sold a hundred times as many radios as they did -- and I'm amazed they didn't say, in advance of all the quiet events 'now, we're going to have to be quiet, but if you'd like a commentary, then we have radios available for a fiver'.










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