London: A 10-member Indian archery squad and a four member Indian weightlifting team were the first Indian sportspersons to be welcomed into the London Olympics Games Village at 5.00 pm on July 16 by the Dy Chef de Mission of the Indian contingent Brig PK Muralidharan Raja.

The sprawling Olympic Games Village consists of 2,818 townhouses and apartments and can accommodate 15,000 residents. Although the rest of the shooting contingent would be checking into the Games Village later on, Beijing Olympic Gold Medalist Abhinav Bindra also reported at the Games Village at 6.00 pm on July 16.

Although the euphoria of participating in an Olympic Games was quite evident on the faces of the athletes, the fact that the weather was quite cold and the unpredictable rains were certainly a dampener on their spirits. They have however settled down and are looking forward to carry out their workouts at the training venues from tomorrow morning.

The Organisers have arranged for volunteers with each contingent who have been trained for nearly six months. The Indian Contingent has been lucky to receive its share of 7 NOC volunteers who are all Indian by origin but working in UK and are fully charged up to help and provide administrative assistance during the Games.

The Indian contingent of 81 athletes and 51 officials have been provided accommodation in the Seaside Building S1 also named as Titan. Majority of the athletes and the officials are in the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of S1 Building and the others will be in townhouses by the side of the building. All athletes and officials will be given accommodation on twin sharing basis and each apartment has rooms which have two beds in each room. Each apartment has been provided with a TV in the sitting lounge and the rooms are quite clean and have all basic amenities including WIFI connection. The main dining hall which caters for all tastes including a special corner named ‘Foods from India & Asia’ (although not functional as yet) is just about 300 yards from where the Indian Contingent has been put up. The Transport Mall from where athletes and officials have to go to training venues or competition venues are also very near and barely 200 metres from the place of accommodation of our athletes.

The official welcome ceremony for the Indian Contingent has been scheduled to be held at the Olympic Games Village on 22 July 2012. However, the Indian delegation has requested the Organisers to kindly consider a change of date to 25 July so that majority of its participants would have arrived including the Indian media personnel. The Organisers have expressed their inability to accede to this request as other countries have already been slotted for 25 & 26 July and that there was no time slot available wherein Indian Contingent could have been squeezed in.

All in all it is a wonderful, positive atmosphere that is prevalent here at the Games Village except for the cold gust of wind which blows quite often and the rains which cannot be predicted either. Therefore all those who are planning to come to London for the Games may like to bring light woollens as well as a raincoat / umbrella for their personal use.

By Indian Sports News Network