London 2012 blog

London 2012 staff gathered with other people working in Canary Wharf to watch the spectacular Beijing Opening Ceremony on the big screen.

Read more of “Watching the Beijing Opening Ceremony”

As a London 2012 blogger of some enthusiasm I'm rarely lost for words. I've just come out from the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games.....................................................

The point is not just that the Chinese created an astonishing and elegant spectacle tonight, but that so many different emotions are pulsing through the veins right now. Inspiration about what an Opening Ceremony can achieve – the ability, through the Olympic Games, to focus the eyes and ears of the whole world on one very special stage – anticipation of our own modest eight minute Handover segment taking its place in the same magnificent stadium in two weeks' time – delight at the response from the UK where a record 18 Live Sites offered a big screen experience of the Opening Ceremony to thousands of people – stimulation with the myriad ideas and thoughts that play forward to our own Opening in London in 2012...and a measure of sweaty exhaustion after an extremely long day in Beijing's baking humidity.

It was a ceremony that lived up to, and for many people exceeded, the big expectations that proceeded it. The scale, majesty and poetry of it was quintessentially Chinese whilst the interpretations were contemporary. The pace was deft with the massed drums creating an unforgettable opening and 'wow' moments punctuating the show as it built to an appropriately extravagant finale.

Read more of “Almost lost for words after the Beijing Opening Ceremony”