Archives for October 2009

They gave him perfect 10s  then handed him the championship of the world. But they couldn't fool Tom Daley, Britain's teen diving sensation, into believing he is the finished article. Onethousand days out from the London Olympics nobody plunges into water with more precision from a height greater than two double-decker buses perched on top of each other.

At the age of 15 Daley already has the World and European 10-metre platform titles under his belt and is clearly a golden prospect for 2012. YetyoungTomisnobody's fool - and not just because this week he takes the first of his GCSEs six months early in order to be free to compete next spring. His final score of 539.85 at the Worlds in Rome this summer would have been good enough for Olympic gold in Beijing last year.

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The 250 acre site is currently one of the largest construction projects in the world as London prepares for the global games that are scheduled to start in 1000 days. The derelict industrial land of the lower Lea Valley in the east end of London is due to be transformed in less than three years with new waterways, parkland, Olympic venues and homes for athletes.

Downing Street and Buckingham Palace have approved a proposal to name it after the Queen. The name change will take place in time for the Olympics, ensuring a worldwide audience will become instantly familiar with what will be the biggest urban park built in Europe in 150 years.

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 reality tours into the future have been launched where you can make your way through the completed 2012 Olympics site-even though it's still three years away from being completed. An interactive exhibition has opened which includes a simulator letting curious visitors navigate their way around the completed Olympic Park of the future.

The three-week exhibition at City Hall also includes a model of the whole project including the main stadium and velodrome. The construction site itself has already had 40,000 visitors including children from the East London 'host' boroughs to see the progress. But the exhibition is a chance to see what the Olympic Park will look like when it is finished.

This month we started work on the basketball venue — the last venue on the Olympic Park to get underway. It is testament to the excellence of our workforce that we continue to hit our milestones and deliver against a challenging programme. The external structure of the stadium was completed in July. Work is now under way on the cable roof structure which will be lifted into place by the end of the year. By next summer the first seats should be in. 

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The British economy may or may not be still in recession. Most people running businesses don’t really care. Whatever the figures show, they know that life is tough for them now and they are planning on the assumption that it will remain so for some time to come. But that doesn’t mean that the mood in British business is all gloom. On the contrary, business confidence has recovered to its highest level for 18 months. Many companies are performing very well and see the downturn as an opportunity as much as a challenge.

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With just over 1,000 days to go until the start of the 2012 London Olympics, the team in charge of the Games' tech is poised for the real work to get underway. After a year of limbering up, Atos Origin - the company leading the consortium of IT companies designing and building the 2012 Games' tech infrastructure - is getting ready to hit the track.

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Chicago's loss in the race for the 2016 Summer Olympics has turned into a gain for the London 2012 organizing committee. That's because Doug Arnot is going to work as director of games operations of the London Summer Games. Arnot was director of sport, venues and Games operations for Chicago 2016. His star did not fall when Chicago's burned out in the first round of the Oct. 2 voting that made Rio de Janeiro the 2016 Olympic host city.

During Chicago's final presentation, Arnot began and ended by speaking French (the only Chicago presenter to deliver a sentence in anything but English), therein recognizing and honoring the idea that French is one of the two official languages of the Olympic movement.  Such a gesture was, of course, too little, too late for a bid that foundered at least partly because of the United States Olympic Committee's inability to communicate, through either the words or actions of its leadership, a real desire to be part of the Olympic world as more than an occasional Games host.

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After receiving more than 2,000 entries in its open call for art works to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, the Arts Council has announced 12 lucky winners, who will have access to £5.4 million ($8.8 million) in funding for their projects.

The winning commissions range from a giant spinning column of clouds and light in Liverpool by Anthony McCall to a full-size soccer field that will be built in the forests of Scotland by Craig Coulthard. As the world’s soccer stars battle around the United Kingdom, amateurs will battle on Coulthard’s pitch in the name of art.

Other winners include Adian Avion and Marc Rees, who plan to “nest” an abandoned DC9 airplane around Wales, and Alex Hartley, who may have proposed the most mysterious project, which is said to involve bringing an island that he discovered in the Arctic Ocean in 2004 to the shores of England.

The financial outlook of the Mayor of London's economic agency is "bleak" given the £159 million black hole created by the project to buy up land for the 2012 Olympics, a report has warned.

The London Assembly's Budget and Performance Committee Pre-Budget Report claims the recently identified London Development Agency (LDA) shortfall has "not only damaged the Agency's reputation but has significantly reduced its resources".

The LDA had to pay more than 3,000 businesses and individuals to buy land for the 600 hectare site in Stratford, east London, through compulsory purchase orders but insisted there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

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Some 40 organisations across Newham, where the Olympics complex is being built, have launched a campaign today (Wednesday) to scrap the area's 'second priority' status.

Newham is considered by some Government bodies such as the Office of National Statistics and the Prime Minister's Strategy unit as a deprived 'inner city' location because of its poverty.

But it falls technically outside the 'Inner London' zone when it comes to Whitehall cash for schools, campaigners point out.

The local education authority gets £1,000 less for each child than in neighbouring Tower Hamlets and Hackney, both 'Olympic' boroughs inside the 'Inner London' boundary.

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