31 July 2007
Northumberland Street Games saw some typical British weather – rain! However, this did not deter the dance instructors from the Concordia Leisure Centre getting stuck into leading a dynamic and energetic session of Boxercise, Body Pump, Body Balance and Step Aerobics getting everyone involved in the process!
Read more of “Exercise - suddenly fun again”
There I was doing my day job, wooing the bus and coach industry to work with us for 2012, and the bus company goes and launches a brand new daily commuter coach from my home town Milton Keynes, direct to my desk (well almost) at Canary Wharf. So yesterday (Monday 30 July) I swapped rail travel for the security of a guaranteed leather seat, full climate control and wi-fi, but without buying a luxury car (er not that I could afford one!)
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Today we’re celebrating 5 years to go until the Olympic and Paralympic Games. We’re lucky enough to have a whole host of sporting celebrities in our borough for the day to mark the countdown with a day of sporting activity. The five year milestone is a great way to celebrate the fact we’ll be hosting the Games and all the opportunities that this brings to our community.
I’ve been passionate about the Games since day one and the five year mark means getting another step closer to achieving the benefits of the Games for local people – the excitement is really...
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Definitely a one-off event for me last Monday, making a speech in front of a giant concrete slab behind which a Tunnel Boring Machine is about to grind its way out into the open air at Woolwich’s new railway terminus. The Docklands Light Railway is coming to South East London to bring direct access to the Olympic Park for tens of thousands of spectators in 2012.
Speeches over, 560 tonnes of machinery started grinding its way towards us and the media. It’s so easy to be glib about building underground railways but to see the ground give way, to hear the...
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When I left Heathrow on Friday 13th en route to Rio for the XV Pan American Games I was not sure quite what to expect as this was my first trip to South America and my first experience of the Pan American Games.
Rio is renowned as being one of the most beautiful cities in the world with its beaches, lagoons, mountains and forests. It is also well known for the annual carnival, the figure of Christ who surveys the 8 million Cariocas who live in the city below and of course football - the other religion of the Brazilian...
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Rio is full of hangovers this morning – indeed for some the party’s still going on – and this is a city that knows how to party. But if ever there was an excuse it was last night.
The opening ceremony of the Pan American Games is the talk of the town – the talk of Brasil and much of the Americas. It managed to bounce the footballers out of the world famous Maracana stadium – a temple to the greats of Brasilian football.
Built in the 1950s, it was once the largest stadium in the world. Before it installed seats...
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24 July 2007
Weymouth usually conjures up images of water but not the kind that comes down in sheets from the sky! The Culture, Ceremonies and Education team enjoyed an away day in Weymouth last week at the Olympic Sailing Academy – a 2012 Olympic venue. Even the torrential rain didn’t dampen the enthusiasm for discussions around their evolving plans or the desire to have a go at the Olympic sport of sailing.
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Some weeks ago we issued an internal request to London 2012 staff to come up with suggestions for improving our in-house green credentials. We had many good ideas put forward: mostly around waste recycling, energy saving and travel and these will be fed into our emerging ‘Green Office’ policy.
In fact this appeal received more feedback than pretty well all other intranet posts to date. Either that means we have a lot of improvement to do, or we have a lot of green conscious employees. I think it is a bit of both.
Another reason was the incentive reward: a visit to...
Read more of “A trip to the top - a garden on a roof”
20 July 2007
Northumberland Street Games saw some typical British weather – rain. However, this did not deter the dance instructors from the Concordia Leisure Centre getting stuck into leading a dynamic and energetic session of Boxercise, Body Pump, Body Balance and Step Aerobics getting everyone involved in the process!
So there in the mild drizzle I found myself punching the air in time to the music and I couldn’t seem to wipe the huge grin off my face! Exercise had suddenly become fun again!
If you haven’t had a go at this fun and frantic fitness regime I certainly recommend it. I’m not...
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A large number of the LOCOG team recently visited Stoke Mandeville Sports Stadium for the Disabled, the birthplace of the modern Paralympic movement. We were welcomed by the Chairman of Wheelpower, Kevan Baker and its CEO, Martin McElhatton.
Four things struck me in particular.
First, the facilities at Stoke Mandeville are impressive and clearly well used by both the Paralympic and local communities at pretty much all levels of ability – a superb example of how the facilities being built for 2012 should be used in legacy.
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Today I visited an athletics camp for promising young endurance athletes at St Mary’s College in Twickenham. The camp is organised by UK Athletics and funded by the London Marathon.
It was set up in 2004 with the aim of providing the opportunity to enjoy the experience of a training camp whilst gaining a valuable insight into what is required to progress to World Class Performance.
It was really nice to spend a bit of time at the sharp end of Olympic project management and to remind myself what the project is really all about - young sporting talent. And a...
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LOCOG’s security team recently welcomed UK and international security partners to an IOC-sponsored security workshop.
We welcomed a high level delegation of police and security officials planning for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games and Paralympic Games to Canary Wharf HQ for a jam-packed agenda. Members of the 24-agency Olympic Security Directorate - the “OSD” - joined the team to make the workshop a full-house.
LOCOG organised a series of presentations providing security lessons learnt from past Games. A star-studded cast of Olympic Security speakers included:
Vassilios Konstantinidis (Director of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games Security Division);
Duncan Jarrett (former Metropolitan Police Officer...
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Liz, DCMS, 18 July 2007
This year’s Roadshow is all about having a go and joining in. And Bradley Everest is glad he did just that at the Kent County Show last Saturday.
Bradley is 21 years old and has recently moved from Orpington to Ramsgate. Bradley was enjoying his annual day out at the Show and decided to pop in to the Roadshow and have a go at the Dream Stats activities.
Whilst in a number of sports teams at school – cricket, football and volleyball – Bradley hasn’t done much sport since. He enjoys a bit of recreational cycling, but his real passion...
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"Everything's changing in Rio, but everything stays the same." This is one of the many Rio paradoxes that Damian Platt explains to me on my last day in the city.
Damian is a Brit who's been working in Rio for the last couple of years. He looks after international partnerships for the "Afroreggae" project which is doing astonishing work in the city’s many favelas, or shantytowns.
We're standing right next to another paradox. In the heart of one of the favelas we’re outside a police station – but you wouldn’t know it. The small breeze block shack looks like many others here...
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Jonquil Solt, the Chair of the International Paralympic Equestrian Committee, took time from her peripatetic schedule to spend a few hours at LOCOG recently with Piers Jones, Tony Sainsbury and me.
We started off at the London 2012 Paralympic emblem and as you can see from the picture Jonquil was very happy to be seen with it! She is sporting a colour-coordinated pink version of the 2012 pin.
Her husband Bobby came along on the visit and also pinned on the world-famous emblem, in a colour which very nicely matched his tie.
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There hardly seems to be a day that goes by when you don’t stumble across the phrase ‘carbon footprint’ in the press or media. London 2012 is very aware of this heightened public interest in climate change issues and we are committed to delivering ‘low carbon’ Games.
One of our first challenges, however, is to define what we mean by our carbon footprint. In June we appointed two specialist consultants to help us with this task.
Last Monday marked a significant point in the project as their initial recommendations were presented to a special workshop at our offices with invited experts...
Read more of “Defining a different set of accountancy rules – a Games first”
Today I have been in Switzerland with Denis Oswald, Chair of the Coordination Commission, where I was Guest of Honour at the FIFA Masters Degree Ceremony.
The “FIFA Master” is a one year Masters degree in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport taught by three prestigious European universities: De Monfort University (Leicester, UK), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Milan, IT) and Neuchâtel University (Neuchâtel, CH). It was created by FIFA in 2000 and is coordinated by CIES (International Center for Sports Studies). Every year, approximately 30 postgraduates from 15 to 20 different nationalities, take part in this full-time course, which covers...
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12 July 2007
On Sunday, I jumped in the car and headed off round the M25 and up the M11, as the 2012 Roadshow was in Bury St Edmonds at the Suffolk Youth Games.
As someone new to my job at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and who had not visited the Roadshow before, this was a great introduction to the work being done to promote 2012 and sports participation right across the UK.
As well as meeting members of the Roadshow team and key stakeholders from Suffolk and the East of England region, I saw children participating in a wide range of...
Read more of “Finding out what it's all about”
I’ve never been to South America and never experienced an emergency landing before. So when the pilot urged as all to adopt the “Brace – Brace – Brace” position for a rather hasty landing at Rio International, it was new territory in more ways than one.
The suspected fire in the hold turned out to be a suspect warning system, but the dramatic arrival was not a bad metaphor for a crash landing into this most dramatic of cities. Rio is hosting the Pan American games and clearly relishing the opportunity.
It’s a city of the most astonishing contrasts. Great wealth...
Read more of “Combatting poverty with culture: Rio”
