London 2012 blog

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 building!

Our borough will have brand new facilities: a new urban park on our doorstep, the national hockey centre and other new facilities.

Read more of “Five cheers to go!”

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 deep rumbling noises and feel the ground shaking is always impressive.

The ODA is putting a great deal of effort and money into a spread of projects all across the DLR’s expanding network but the tunnelling project to take the DLR under the Thames into South East London is the one that I think I shall write up in my memoirs as leaving the biggest legacy benefits after the Games are over. I look forward to going back to ride the first official DLR train into Woolwich Arsenal station in 2009.

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 people.

However Rio is also infamous for the gangs that roam the enormous sprawling shanty towns (Favelas) which provide homes for millions of people but also provide refuge for the the warring gang members. So which side of Rio would I discover and what would I make of it all?

Read more of “Games, Brazilian style”

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 the old stadium could take 200,000 passionate Brasilian football fans – but I’m not sure I would have wanted to be right in the thick of it.

Now it has its PanAm carnivale costume on as a mere 100,000 people gathered for the opening ceremony of the 2007 Games. This wasn’t just a good show – it managed to capture the energy that drives Rio – the creativity that thrives in the favelas and the passion for life that’s obvious everywhere. Instead of high-tech wizardy and theatrical toys, this show drew on local talents, brilliantly choreographed (by Bryn Walters from the UK), and vividly costumed.

Read more of “Energy, creativity, passion: it's the PanAm Games”

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.

Read more of “Getting wet in Weymouth”

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 the nature reserve on our building’s roof – the 33rd floor! Luckily we did not plan this for last Friday; today’s visit was fine and not too windy. Apart from enjoying panoramic views across the city, we were treated to an ecology tour of the green roof plot by local expert and ‘Living Roof’ expert, Dusty Gedge.

Read more of “A trip to the top - a garden on a roof”

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 sure the lads would let me live it down if they knew just how much fun I had boxercising (although this blog may give them a clue!).

The display area was quickly pounced upon by Anna’s Angels, a local dance troop who showed the rapidly growing crowd of spectators just what hard work and practice can produce – a fine and perfectly choreographed dance off battle – brilliant stuff.

Read more of “Rain couldn't dampen spirits in Northumberland”

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.

Read more of “Inspiration at the home of the Paralympic Games”

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 and Athens 2004 adviser);
Peter Ryan (an IOC security consultant and Head of the New South Wales Police during Sydney 2000); and
Francesco Norante (Former Head of Security for Turin 2006 and currently Vancouver 2010’s Director of Security Integration).

Read more of “International security partners come to town”

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 is ten-pin bowling. Delighted that his Dream Stats showed that he is ideally suited to cycling, Bradley decided to have a go at a couple of the Dream Stats tests.

First off, the grip test which reveals grip strength. The average male score is 40kg, with Audley Harrison weighing in at an impressive 70kg. Bradley scored 86kg.

The curiosity of Steve Backley, our Olympic athlete for the day, was immediately aroused. Bradley repeated the grip test, scoring an incredible 87.5kg. Next, the rowing machine.

After a few false starts – we moved the back of the rower onto the grass as it kept wobbling (probably due to the strength being applied) – we all eagerly awaited the results. Bradley scored an amazing 743W on the 7-stroke power test. To put into context, Steve Redgrave’s score was 736W.

Read more of “Some seriously impressive stats in Kent”

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.

Read more of “Talking horse with the Paralympic Equestrian chief”

"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 except that it has a particularly colourful graffiti mural covering two of its walls.

A relaxed looking policeman is standing in the doorway smiling. Just fifty yards away down the narrow alley is a boy of no more than ten proudly brandishing his automatic rifle for all the world to see. Both apparently aware of the other – neither doing anything about it – for now.

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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 from Government, the GLA, the London Development Agency, Transport for London, the British Standards Institute, several environmental organisations, and the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, as well as the in-house sustainability team and several interested colleagues within London 2012.

Read more of “Defining a different set of accountancy rules – a Games first”

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 cheek by jaw with profound poverty – cutting edge technology and rapid development alongside the most laid-back-in-the sun beach life – sporting passions and cultural drive fueled from inspiration to live life beyond the vast “favelas” – or shanty communities.

Read more of “Combatting poverty with culture: Rio”

The National Lottery Dream Stats Zone has so far proved a very popular part of the London 2012 Roadshow, with people of all ages having a go.

Read more of “Beating Jonathan Edwards at Dream Stats”

On Sunday I took a trip down memory lane, when I attended the London Youth Games at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre as part of the London 2012 roadshow team.

As a youth (what seems like only yesterday!!) I used to compete for Richmond Upon Thames Borough in this very competition and was thrilled to see that it was still going strong with lots of enthusiastic youngsters striving to achieve a place on the podium or a personal best in their chosen disciplines. I had to try very hard to stop myself hitting the track to see if I still had that finishing kick!

Read more of “Giving it a go”

I was lucky to be invited with my co-Young Ambassador Danielle and a group of others Young Ambassadors to the business briefing on the Cultural Olympiad in the Royal Festival Hall.

We hadn’t quite realised the scale of the meeting we were about to attend. With massive 2012 logos everywhere and over 500 attendants we soon realised that this – culture - was a huge part of the future Games.

After receiving our name badges and a pin we started to mingle with some of the people behind the Olympics. We were introduced to such people as Paul Deighton, Phil Lane, Nick Fuller, Tessa Jowell and many more fundamental figures involved in the Games. We informed them of what our roles as Young Ambassadors is and how we are promoting sport in the lead up to London 2012.

Read more of “A cultural eye opener”

Saturday the 30th of June will go down in local sporting history as a momentous day; not only did it see the 9th annual Northamptonshire Youth Games, as fine a show case of Northamptonshire’s sporting talent and enthusiasm that you would ever wish to see, but it also saw the visit to the county of the national 2012 Roadshow.

And what a Roadshow! The bus looked resplendent against the backdrop of black thunder clouds, as nature conspired to dampen our sprits and enthusiasm for all things sporty and Olympic; but the young people, staff, teachers, parents and visitors would not be put off and fully grasped the opportunity to try new things, make pledges about their sporting and life ambitions as well as seek refuge in the bus from the showers.

If the pledges are anything to go by, Northamptonshire is blessed with some very talented and committed people who will ensure that the Olympics leave a lasting legacy in this county. The people that came with the bus should also be thanked warmly for keeping their spirits up and not letting the rain get to them.

Read more of “2012 British Tennis champ...it started in Northamptonshire?”