Generally I would not attend a sporting event at the Sears Centre. The arena is a 32 mile, 45 minute drive from my house (without traffic). Two years ago, I used my birthday as an excuse to attend a Chicago Shamrox game (now defunct) since the stadium opened in late 2006 and I had not attended a National Lacrosse League game at the time.<\/p>\n
Yesterday with the Tyson American Cup at the Sears Centre I decided to make the drive again. This time I made the drive because the event is a high profile gymnastics competition. For example, last year Paul Hamm and Nastia Liukin competed and won the event before the 2008 Summer Olympics. While Paul Hamm withdrew 9 days before the Olympics started, Nastia Liukin<\/a> won the Women\u2019s All-Around Gold medal in Beijing.<\/p>\n Obtaining Tickets With an event like this, there are usually no scalpers because there is not enough demand for tickets and the event is 30+ miles outside of Chicago. I entered the main arena thinking I would have to buy a ticket from the box office. But as I entered, I saw a man with his two daughters. I thought to myself that this was a highly likely case of an extra ticket. I approached the man as he was getting ready for security and asked if he had an extra ticket. He did and handed me his 4th ticket for free.<\/p>\n The event<\/u> Fabian Hambuechen won the men\u2019s event. He also won the bronze medal in the high bar competition in Beijing.<\/p>\n Most of the other contestants had problems staying on their respective apparatus. This made me think it is a good thing these contestants have 3.5 years until the next Olympic Games in London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Generally I would not attend a sporting event at the Sears Centre. The arena is a 32 mile, 45 minute drive from my house (without traffic). Two years ago, I used my birthday as an excuse to attend a Chicago Shamrox game (now defunct) since the stadium opened in late 2006 and I had not attended a National Lacrosse League game at the time.
<\/u>I arrived at the competition shortly after the 1:30 pm start time. The event was scheduled to run on NBC from 3 \u2013 5 pm so I did not feel I had to arrive right on time and watch the entire 3.5 affair. To my surprise, it cost $20 to park which I thought was outrageous for the Sears Centre.<\/p>\n
What I did not realize before attending this event was that every athlete that participated in the Olympics (only six months ago) was taking a break from competition. Thus, the most popular athlete competing Saturday was Bridget Sloan<\/a>, while the most popular gymnast in attendance was Nastia Liukin, who was attending as a spectator. Fans consistently called out Nastia\u2019s name during the event. Sloan, who also competed for the US Team in Beijing, finished second to Jordyn Wieber<\/a> in the women\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
\nYesterday with the Tyson American Cup at the Sears Centre I decided to make the drive again. This time I made the drive because the event is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anygame-anywhere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}