THERE’S nothing in the Olympics you won’t have seen from a more propitious angle sitting on your sofa (assuming you have a telly), except this: you won’t have seen the site itself or smelt the atmosphere.

Who actually goes to the Olympics? Who’d come all this way, and who can afford it? What do they get out of it? We know a lot about this magical fountain of sport, with its perpetually flowing waters, but who is standing around the fountain, throwing in the coins?

The Corporates: Herman, Linda, Willem and Dennis are here as the guests of a bank. They’re four of a party of 34, all in matching blazers provided by the Dutch bank. Herman is a farmer, but they all have different jobs.

Their commitment to the colour orange is intense, as it is for so many Netherlanders (I saw someone at the cycling time trials with orange mascara). They love hockey, they love cycling, they love it all (they also have tickets for it all).

The Friends and Family: Outside the Riverbank arena the kin of the Australian women’s hockey team stand in a state of high emotion, waiting to congratulate their daughters or girlfriends or sisters. Australia have just beaten the US 1-0; look, everybody likes winning, but in the pantheon of wins, it’s not the biggest result ever, merely increasing their already good chance of going through to the next round. So God knows what their families will do if they win; they’re already about to explode.

The Home Advantage: This is what the British have been banking on for the past seven years, that the spectators would inject such a powerful shot of support that it would act on the athletes like performance-enhancing drugs, all the better for being invisible in the bloodstream. Days one through four, it did not appear to be working; on the fifth day it kicked in and now there is no stopping the medal-aiding GB-supporters.

Harriet Johnson, Katherine Perry and Clare O’Sullivan, all 23, with 24-year-old Emma Shaw, are here for the water polo. They play the game themselves.

The Horn-Wearers: I do not really understand the significance of horn-garnished headwear. I get it when it’s people from Denmark (Vikings), I get it when we do it (Vikings), I slightly get it when the French do it (Asterix), but the Lithuanians? They just really like horns.

Darius, Andrus and Odrus have just seen their country beaten by the French at basketball, which is apparently a huge deal in Lithuania.

The Fiscally Responsible: Alfonso and Pablo, 28, and Pepe, 27, are all wearing water polo balls as hats, painted in the Spanish colours, “but they’d all had a puncture”, Pablo told me, anxious for me not to walk away thinking that any polo paraphernalia had been deliberately ruined. I had moved the conversation in this direction, by asking whether their friends had thought them hedonistic, spending tons of money on water polo tickets, when all Europe and Spain especially (us too, of course) stood on the brink of collapse. “No, because we came with a budget and this is the budget. We are staying in Crystal Palace! This is our economic situation as well. We will stay with the budget.”

Team America: The Millers are 21-year-old Megan, Nick, 19, Kendall, 15, and their mother Laura, 54. They have tickets to swimming, gym, basketball and track- and-field events. “We planned,” said Kendall. “We’ve been planning this trip for six months.” —The Guardian, London