How does one earn a lifetime ban from the Olympic Village? Hamish Blake and Andy Lee—aka Australia’s most iconic duo—can tell you first hand.
In a recent interview with Triple M’s The Rush Hour With Leisel Jones, Liam & Dobbo, Lee shared how a stunt from their days on radio resulted in some pretty serious consequences.
It all went down at the 2012 Olympics in London when Lee and Blake were filming a segment for their hit TV series Euro Gap Year.
“Hamish and I were given the honour of speaking to the [Australian athletes] before it started,” Lee explained.
Of course, in order to speak to the olympians, the duo were required to enter the Olympic Village.
“There’s a lot of applications and security you have to fill out to get into the Olympic village … and someone who filled out the forms put my birth date as that day’s date (in 2012),” Lee continued.
As it turned out, the Olympic Village is so tightly regulated that even this minor clerical error had Lee and Blake unable to enter.
But the quick-thinking duo didn’t give up, and eventually found a workaround – with the help of one of the Aussie athletes.
“I won’t name who, but someone on the team said, ‘Hey, I can bring an outfit out. You look a little bit like one of the high jumpers,’” Andy recalled.
“Suddenly I went through on someone else’s (pass) and we snuck in, which was obviously a huge breach of security at a time when they were trying to prove that security was tight.”
Lee went on to explain that, for about 90 minutes, the pair seemed to have got away with their seemingly harmless escapade. Eventually, however, the Olympic Committee caught on.
“They dragged us and put us in separate rooms and there was a lot of interrogation. We were… just tight-lipped, and then the head of security came in.”
In a fortunate turn of events, the security guard in question was Australian, and immediately recognised the comedy duo.
“He went, ‘Hamish and Andy, what are you guys doing here?’ We explained, and he was more understanding.”
Understanding or not, Lee and Blake were still dealt some hefty consequences. The main one? A lifetime ban from any Olympic Village.
“We had to agree to be banned for life,” Lee said.
The 2012 Australian team also suffered as a result, with some of their visitor passes to the Olympic Village rescinded.
“That’s why I wasn’t really proud of what happened. I hate the fact that some people missed out [on getting visitor passes],” Lee said.
While we’d love to see some of Blake and Lee’s antics at this year’s Games in Paris, that doesn’t look likely.
