London 2012 Summer Olympics

Women's boxing included on 2012 Olympics list

2009-08-15T02:30:00.000-07:00

When the IOC dropped baseball and softball from the 2012 Olympic program several years ago, it said it would consider adding new sports that had a clean reputation and a wide appeal.

Rogge pointed out that women's boxing has around 200 athletes who could potentially compete in 2012, while softball has only around 120. As a result, he said, the IOC considered women's boxing to be more popular.

Women's boxing has boomed in Britain since 2005, with the number of registered female fighters rising from 50 to 600, PA reported.

Softball and baseball were considered for inclusion in the 2016 Games along with squash, karate, roller sports, golf and rugby, but the board decided to consider only the last two.

The IOC has not yet selected the host city for 2016, but its board members will submit golf and rugby to the full IOC session for a final decision at its meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October.

"Golf and rugby scored high on all the criteria," Rogge told the IOC's official Web site. "They have global appeal, a geographically diverse line-up of top iconic athletes and an ethic that stresses fair play."

The International Golf Federation has proposed two four-day strokeplay tournaments for men and women, with 18 holes per round and medals awarded to the three players in each with the lowest scores.

The International Rugby Board has proposed men's and women's Sevens tournaments, with 12 teams in each being divided into two pools before semifinals and finals.

London 2012 Summer Olympics | Financing ,Ticketing and Scheduling

2009-06-14T03:09:00.000-07:00

The costs of mounting the Games are separate from those for building the venues and infrastructure, and redeveloping the land for the Olympic Park. While the Games are privately funded, the venues and Park costs are met largely by public money.

On 15 March 2007 Tessa Jowell announced to the House of Commons a budget of £5.3 billion to cover building the venues and infrastructure for the Games, at the same time announcing the wider regeneration budget for the Lower Lea Valley budget at £1.7 billion.

On top of this, she announced various other costs including an overall additional contingency fund of £2.7 billion, security and policing costs of £600 million, VAT of £800 million and elite sport and Paralympic funding of nearly £400 million. According to these figures, the total for the Games and the regeneration of the East London area, is £9.345 billion. Then Mayor Ken Livingstone pledged the Games Organising Committee would make a profit.^[21]

The costs for staging the Games (£2 billion) are funded from the private sector by a combination of sponsorship, merchandising, ticketing and broadcast rights. This budget is raised and managed by the London 2012 Organising Committee. According to Games organisers, the funding for this budget broadly breaks down as:

63% from Central Government;
23% from National Lottery
13% from the Mayor of London and the London Development Agency

On 18 August 2007 The Belfast Telegraph reported that jubilation over winning the right to stage the Olympic Games was becoming more muted as realisation dawns on the public of the enormous costs involved in creating facilities for the athletes.^[22] Grassroot sport cuts will fund Olympics, government figures suggested on 19 August 2007.^[23]

In November 2007, Edward Leigh MP, criticised the organisers for significantly under-estimating the cost of staging the games, suggesting they had either "acted in bad faith or were incompetent".^[24]

On 10 December 2007 Tessa Jowell announced confirmation of the budget announced earlier in 2007. In June 2007, the Ministerial Funders’ Group (established to manage the allocation of contingency to the ODA within the overall budget) met and agreed a first allocation of contingency to the ODA, being £360m out of the £500m of initial contingency announced in March, to enable the ODA to manage early cost pressures.

Following its second meeting on 26 November 2007, the Funders’ Group has now agreed a baseline budget and scope proposed by the ODA. The total budgeted base cost to be met by the public sector funding package remains at £6.090bn including tax and excluding general programme contingency as announced in March. This includes the allocation to the ODA of the remaining £140m from the initial £500m contingency announced in March.^[25]

There have, however, been concerns over how the Olympics are to be funded. In February 2008, a London Assembly culture and sport committee report expressed concerns over the funding of the games taking away money from London's sports and arts groups.^[26] There have also been complaints that funding towards the Olympics has been to the detriment of funding other areas of the UK. In Wales, there has been criticism from Plaid Cymru about the games depriving Wales of money, by using UK-wide funding rather than English funding. TheWales on Sunday newspaper claimed former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair broke his promise not to use National Lottery funding for the Olympic games.^[28]^[29]

Partners

To help fund the cost of the games the London Olympic organisers have agreed partnership deals with major companies. "Tier One" partners already announced include Lloyds TSB, EDF Energy, BT, British Airways, BP, Nortel and Adidas — who announced the deal on the popular website YouTube.^[30] "Tier Two" supporters already announced include Deloitte andCadbury's.

Ticketing

Organisers estimate that some 7.7 million tickets would be available for the Olympic Games, and 1.5 million tickets for the Paralympic Games. They will be going on sale in 2011, with at least 50% of these priced under £20. To reduce traffic, ticketholders would be entitled to free use of London's public transportation network on the day of the event.^[31] It is estimated that 82% of available Olympic tickets and 63% of Paralympic tickets will be sold. There will also be free events: for example, the marathon, triathlon and road cycling.

Scheduling issues

Some representatives of Muslim countries have complained that the 2012 Olympic Games will take place during the month of Ramadan, which in 2012 occurs from 20 July to 19 August. During Ramadan, Muslims are to fast from sunrise to sunset, which may put Muslim athletes at a disadvantage during the Games. Some Muslims have called for the Olympics to be rescheduled outside this period.

2012 Summer Olympics | Public Transport

2009-06-14T03:07:00.000-07:00

Public transport, an aspect of the bid which scored poorly in the IOC's initial evaluation, needs to see numerous improvements, including the expansion of the London Overground's East London Line, upgrades to the Docklands Light Railway and the North London Line, and the new "Javelin" high-speed rail service, using Hitachi 'bullet' trains.

They also plan to have 80% of athletes travel less than 20 minutes to their event. The Park would be served by 10 separate railway lines with a combined capacity of 240,000 passengers per hour. Park and ride schemes also feature amongst the many plans aimed at reducing traffic levels during the games.

Concerns have been expressed at the logistics of spectators travelling to the venues outside London. In particular, the sailing events on Portland are in an area with no direct motorway connection, and with local roads that are heavily congested by existing tourist traffic in the summer. There is also only limited scope for extra services on theSouth Western Main Line beyond Southampton, without new infrastructure. Games organisers say that having analysed past Games sailing events, they would expect fewer spectators than have attended recent events such as the Carnival and Tall Ships Race, this despite Great Britain topping the sailing medal table at the previous three Olympics.

London Olympic 2012 | Venues and infrastructure

2009-06-14T03:05:00.000-07:00

The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will use a mixture of new venues, existing and historic facilities, and temporary facilities, some of them in well-known locations such as Hyde Park and Horse Guards Parade. In the wake of the problems that plagued the Millennium Dome, the organisers' intention is that there will be no white elephants after the Games and instead that a "2012 legacy" will be delivered. Some of the new facilities will be reused in their Olympic form, while others, including the 80,000 seater main stadium,^[20] will be reduced in size and several will be relocated elsewhere in the UK. The plans are part of the regeneration of Stratford in east London which will be the site of the Olympic Park, and of the neighbouring Lower Lea Valley.

This has required the compulsory purchase of some business properties, which are being demolished to make way for Olympic venues and infrastructure improvements. This has caused some controversy, with some of the affected proprietors claiming that the compensation offered is inadequate. In addition, concerns about the development's potential impact on the future of the century-old Manor Garden Allotments have inspired a community campaign, and the demolition of the Clays Lane housing estate was opposed by tenants.

The majority of venues have been divided into three zones within Greater London: the Olympic Zone, the River Zone and the Central Zone. In addition to these are those venues that, by necessity, are outside the boundaries of Greater London, such as the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy on the Isle of Portland in Dorset (which will host the sailing events) and other stadia across the UK.

London olympic 2012 | The Bidding process

2009-06-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXX Olympiad, are due to take place in London, United Kingdom from 27 July to 12 August 2012.^[1]

London will become the first city to officially host the modern Olympic Games three times,^[2]^[3] having previously done so in 1908^[4] and in1948.^[5]

By the bid submission deadline of 15 July 2003, nine cities had submitted bids to host the 2012 Olympics. These cities were Havana,Istanbul, Leipzig, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris and Rio de Janeiro.^[6]

On 18 May 2004, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), as a result of a scored technical evaluation, reduced the number of cities to five: London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, and Paris.^[7]

By 19 November 2004 all five candidate cities had submitted their candidate file to the International Olympic Committee. The IOC inspection team visited the five candidate cities during February and March 2005. The Paris bid suffered two set-backs during the IOC inspection visit: a number of strikes and demonstrations coinciding with the visits and a report coming out that Guy Drut, one of the key members of the Paris bid team and IOC member, would face charges over alleged corrupt party political finances.^[8]

On 6 June 2005 the International Olympic Committee released its evaluation reports for the five candidate cities. Although these reports did not contain any scores or rankings, the evaluation report for Paris was considered the most positive, now followed closely by London which had narrowed down most of the gap observed by the initial evaluation in 2004 regarding Paris. Also New York and Madrid obtained very positive evaluation reports.^[9]

Throughout the process and up to the vote at the 117th IOC Session, Paris was widely seen as the favourite to win the nomination, particularly as this was its third bid in recent history. Originally London was seen lagging Paris by considerable margin, however this started to improve with the appointment of Sebastian Coe as new head of London 2012 on 19 May 2004. In late August 2004 some reports started emerging predicting a London and Paris tie in the 2012 bid.^[10] In the final run-up to the 117th IOC Session, London and Paris appeared to be increasingly in a neck-and-neck race. On 1 July 2005 Jacques Rogge, when asked who the winner would be, told the assembled press: "I cannot predict it since I don't know how the IOC members will vote. But my gut feeling tells me that it will be very close. Perhaps it will come down to a difference of say ten votes, or maybe less".

On 6 July 2005, the final selection was announced at the Raffles City Convention Centre in Singapore, where the 117th IOC Session was held. Here Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair was the only leader of the five candidate cities' countries to make a personal lobby (he had also been the only one to attend the 2004 Olympics).^[11] Moscow was the first city to be eliminated, followed by New York and Madrid. The final two cities left in contention were London and Paris. At the end of the fourth round of voting, London won the right to host the 2012 Games with 54 votes, defeating Paris's 50. Various French publications blamed the Paris loss on French President Jacques Chirac's statements before the vote that "We can't trust people [the British] who have such bad food. After Finland, it's the country with the worst food."^[12] Two current members of the International Olympic Committee are from Finland. Several other news sources cited Bertrand Delanoë's complaint regarding Tony Blair's secret late night meetings with numerous (African) IOC representatives as having a more significant impact on final vote.^[13] When reporting London's win, British media covered the expectant crowds in both France and England (and in the other bid cities), and contrasted the jubilant reaction in London to the reaction of the crowd in Paris, where many had gathered in hope of a French win.^[14]^[15]^[16] However, the celebrations in London were overshadowed when London's transport system was attacked less than 24 hours after the announcement.^[17]

In December 2005 it was alleged by Alex Gilady, a senior IOC official, that London had won the right to host the Olympics only because of a voting error. A London 2012 spokesman dismissed this, saying "At the end of the day, it was a secret ballot. This is the opinion of one individual. The result is what matters and we are not going to be drawn into speculation."^[18]

2012 Summer Olympics bidding results
City	NOC	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4
London	United Kingdom	22	27	39	54
Paris	France	21	25	33	50
Madrid	Spain	20	32	31	-
New York City	United States	19	16	-	-
Moscow	Russia	15	-	-	-