On Monday, Team GB and ParalympicsGB athletes joined London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) Chairman Seb Coe, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, and others, on a tour of the Olympic Park. They were there to mark three years to go to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.
The athletes travelled to the Olympic Park on a Javelin® train in the first time-trial of this train between St Pancras International and Stratford International.
Watch this video to see what they thought!
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James, LOCOG Director of Venues and Infrastructure, 29 July 2009
By the time the Olympic flame sheds its light across east London three years from now we'll be ready to host the equivalent of 26 World Championships running concurrently in 34 competition venues. Less than three weeks after the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games, we’ll be doing it all again for the 20 Paralympic Sports in 21 venues.
We'll have made provision for more than 20,000 media representatives in the Main Press Centre (MPC) and International Broadcast Centre (IBC), have prepared for 17,000 athletes and officials from 205 nations to settle into the Olympic Village, trained 70,000 volunteers from all...
Read more of “Getting London and the UK ready as 'venues' to welcome the world”
0 Comments on this postRead more of “How to discover the Olympic Park? Visit the View Tube”
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Horst Schreiber, Secretary General, International Shooting Sport Federation, 28 July 2009
Recently I visited LOCOG for an update on plans for the London 2012 Shooting venue at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich. We were very impressed with what we saw.
Read more of “Why the Royal Artillery Barracks will be a great Shooting venue”
1 Comments on this postOpen Weekend has clearly been huge this year. Where do I begin?
We had nearly 800 events happening up and down the country and the reports, blogs and photos are still flooding in to my inbox. Meanwhile I have managed to get sunburned dancing in Bradford’s city centre, brought Les Dawson back to the screen in Liverpool and, here in Edinburgh, have understood how useful a penguin can be at film screenings.
Read more of “Scratch'n'sniff cinema and a deer called Seb Doe - Open Weekend highlights”
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7 Comments on this postThree years today the eyes of the world will be on London as the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games gets underway.
It's sometimes hard to believe how far we've come since Jacques Rogge spoke those life-changing words in Singapore...'The Games of 2012 are awarded to the city of...London!' We celebrated. And then the hard work really began.
We've had our doubters - of course, we still do. How would we ever get it done on time? Surely we'd never get sponsors? Could we ever deliver on our promise of inspiring the youth of the world to choose sport?
Read more of “Three years to go? Believe me, it's going to be fantastic”
0 Comments on this postThere are many ways that London 2012 is celebrating just three years to go to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.
You may, for instance, have seen the aerial photo of the Olympic Stadium with a giant number '3' within the centre:
So how was the '3' created? This time-lapse footage shows exactly how we did it with the help of five hundred people, give or take, from the Stadium team who formed the outline of the '3'.
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0 Comments on this postVisiting a number of great Open Weekend Events, from the Blue Mile in Plymouth on Friday, to circus performing in Woolwich, Horseball in Lea Valley Park, and Hip Hop Shakespeare on Southbank on Saturday, one point played repeatedly in my mind.
Three years ago I would have been standing up in front of people, explaining what the Games were all about, what the opportunites were and how communities could benefit from them. Lots of polite, interested, but slightly blank expressions would have been the order of the day.
Read more of “The spirit and values of the Games belong to everyone”
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Bill, Director of Ceremonies, Education and Live Sites, 26 July 2009
Everyone in the London 2012 Culture team, and our Regional Creative Programmers have been out scouring the UK this weekend to watch and join in with as many Open Weekend events as possible.
Personally I've clocked up almost 1,500 miles and I've almost forgotten how many different events I've seen. But we’ve hardly touched the surface of nearly 800 events which animated the United Kingdom over this very special three days.
Read more of “Open Weekend - everything we hoped for and more”
4 Comments on this postToday we're welcoming the first members of the public into the Olympic Stadium, as part of Open Weekend 2009. Getting 320 people in over the course of the day will be no mean feat - it's a building site, after all. But I'm sure they're going to be wowed by what they see.
Read more of “The public will be wowed when they enter the Olympic Stadium today”
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Paul, LOCOG Chief Executive, 25 July 2009
After a packed Friday in Plymouth, I started my own Open Weekend competition today: how many Open Weekend events could I attend in a day?
Number 1: Beach volleyball, BMX, netball and much more in Barking town square. Won a lollipop for netball performance.
Read more of “From hip-hop to horseball: getting into the Open Weekend spirit”
1 Comments on this postThis morning I joined hip hop artists Ms Dynamite and Akala; a beach volleyball player; BP representatives; and a host of others for a ballet class at the English National Ballet, to kick off Open Weekend 2009. We've got 750 different events over the course of the weekend, and we're engaging communities the length and breadth of the UK in all sorts of things.
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0 Comments on this postSo, Open Weekend 2009 is underway I genuinely feel it's a really positive thing. This morning I was at the English National Ballet, along with my brother – Akala – to help kick things off. I'm a hip hop artist and rapper, so why did I come along to the class today? Well, I'd be lying if I said I always wanted to be a ballerina…but it was a chance to try something new.
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Anthony, External Relations Executive, 24 July 2009
Answer: Where to start really! How about passion for what they do?
They both dedicate their lives to honing their body into a tool for the rest of us to merely spectate on, an elite level of training that punishes the body and perhaps more shamefully, most receive a level of funding that is disproportionate to their level of skill and dedication.
Read more of “What do ballet dancers and Olympic athletes both have in common?”
2 Comments on this postBill, Director of Ceremonies, Education and Live Sites, 24 July 2009
The second London 2012 Open Weekend is barely a few hours old, and I've just arrived in Belfast for what looks like a busy and rewarding day.
But Sir Nicholas Kenyon at London's Barbican Centre has never been one to let the grass grow under his heels – he and a hundred or so brilliantly talented young musicians jumped the gun last night, 'con brio'.
Read more of “Live Jazz kicks off London 2012 Open Weekend”
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Stephen, ODA Transport team, 24 July 2009
Read more of “Games transport – a trip back to the Berlin 1936 Olympic Park”
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Jon, LOCOG Head of Venue Management, 23 July 2009
In the run-up to the Games, the Venue Management team is responsible for planning how venues will run - what we call the 'integrated operational planning process'. At the moment we are right at the start of this planning phase. This began at the North Greenwich Arena 1 (NGA1) where we are running the Model Venue Exercise (MVE) which will establish the methodology, standards and principles by which we plan all other venues.
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0 Comments on this postOn the surface, 'sustainability' might not appear to be the most interesting area to be involved with when you think about the 2012 Games. So why have I joined as a Sustainability Ambassador? Well, when you consider it deals with issues on both a global ecological scale and a human level it is by far the most far-reaching.
Read more of “Sustainability - the most interesting aspect of London 2012?”
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Anna, LOCOG Licensing Manager, 23 July 2009
You'd have to be walking around with your eyes closed not to have noticed that the 'three years to go' milestone event is nearly upon us and certainly in the licensing and retail team, we are very excited about this event.
I'm the licensing manager for jewellery and collectable products, such as the lapel pins and it's quite a responsibility: pins are a huge part of Olympic culture, as well as a way of paying for the Games.
Read more of “Marking another landmark: the limited edition '3 years to go' pin”
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