Front row seats at the Olympic Stadium's Gold Challenge

We’ve been dying to get into the Olympic Park – though you get a pretty good view from the Olympic Suite (well, it’s a large viewing room, really) at John Lewis Stratford, which is open to everybody, unless a special event is taking place.

So I was so thrilled to get tickets for very first event in the Olympic Stadium – The Gold Challenge. We had to go through ferocious airport-type security to see about
1,000 people take part in 100m and 400m races for charity, alongside celebs and sport stars.

There were runners of all ages - from four-years-old to stalwart octogenarians. An amazing spectacle at lunchtime was a huge parade of between 3,000 and 4,000 people (the organisers didn’t seem quite sure how many!). School children, sports clubs, charity workers, community groups and more circled the stadium in a happy joyous throng, to loud cheering.

About 80,000 people can be packed into the stadium during the Games - 25,000 seats in its permanent lower tier, and a temporary lightweight steel and concrete upper tier holding a further 55,000 spectators that can be removed after the Games.

Sadly like so many people we won’t be one of them. But I love the shape of the stadium, with its distinctive zig-zag roof, like a lot of sharks’ teeth. Inside you can see how these are rigs for lights and all the paraphernalia of today’s digital media.

The top ring of the stadium was built using surplus gas pipes – all part, it seems, of London 2012's 'reduce, reuse, recycle' approach to sustainability. Indeed, the building is 75 per cent lighter in steel use than other stadiums. I’ve also found out that the concrete is low-carbon, made from industrial waste – it has an impressive 40 per cent less embodied carbon than usual.

There are some lovely bright touches inside where light is reflected through coloured panels casting intriguing shadows. We had seats at the bottom near the front, and from here you get a good person-to-person view. But you need to climb up to the top to get a complete vista.

Outside, we walked right round the stadium and had a good view of the complete Aquatics Centre, which has a wonderfully tight sculptural impact, but seems smaller than it looked in the drawings.

Then there is the curvy red metal of the ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower – what a mouthful. At 115 metres (377 ft), it is now Britain’s largest piece of public art, so Anish Kapoor has out-arted Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North.

It looks really rather lovely from inside the park, once you get used to it, and I can’t wait to go up to the top. Apparently you will go up in a lift and then be able to saunter down.

But I didn’t realise it embodied five Olympic rings, and actually I think that’s still difficult to make out. And it should be called the Kapoor tower, really. Other nicknames abound – a quick poll of twitpals (including top design journos) yielded Colossus of Stratford, giant treble clef, helter-skelter, super-sized mutant trombone, hubble bubble and double dipper. And one or two others too rude to print.

As for the “park”, I’ve heard lots of talk of wildflower meadows, but we didn’t see much greenery – I suppose it will be imported nearer the time, but it seems a shame that there are no trees growing already.

All photos are by me – see lots more on in a special photo report on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barbarachandler/sets/72157629362177006/

My book Love London has 180 photographs of London teamed with over 100 quotes about the capital.

http://www.lovelondon.uk.com

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