London 2012 blog

With the judging of shortlisted teams in the VeloPark design competition taking place this week, we were delighted to welcome Olympic cycling champion Chris Hoy to our offices to join our design jury.

While Chris was in town, some LOCOG colleagues and myself met him for dinner. It's not often you get to have a meal with an Olympic Champion so we wasted no time in using the opportunity to grill him on his achievements to date, his plans for the future and the behind the scenes gossip from the cycling world.

Chris was fantastic company and gave us a fascinating insight into his training and experiences in Bolivia earlier this year where he narrowly missed out on the 1km cycling world record but smashed the 500m record.

It's refreshing to find that an Olympic Champion, world-record holder and house-hold name is completely down-to-earth and everyone enjoyed a great night in Chris' company.

On to the judging of design entrants for the VeloPark and it's been an exciting few days in the project.

We've seen presentations, models and design concepts from 8 world-class design teams and it has been fantastic to see their excitement and enthusiasm in competing for the contract to design one of the key venues for the 2012 Games and legacy.

It's also been genuinely exciting to see some of our VeloPark plans literally brought to life by some of the world's leading designers - their visions show what a fantastic prospect the VeloPark buildings and facilities can be for the Games and in legacy.

The judging of entrants is going extremely well and we look forward to announcing our chosen design team later in July.