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London’s Olympic Games have a long way to come

jcinque — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:50:51 +0000

The 2012 Olympic Games are just under six months away, and London is preparing for the biggest event in the United Kingdom since the 1966 FIFA World Cup. But just how successful will the Games of the XXX Olympiad be?

Two Mondays back, while in London, I took the underground out to Stratford in the north-eastern suburbs (for football followers, that’s about halfway between the headquarters of Championship side West Ham United and League One strugglers Leyton Orient).

I was heading to the site of the upcoming Olympic Games. Having lived in Sydney during what we liked to call the greatest Olympics ever, I was disappointed with what I saw.

London’s Olympic Park isn’t nearly finished, and perhaps this is why there isn’t any signage at Stratford Underground to point visitors in the right direction. (Strictly speaking there was one sign, except that one was sending people in the wrong direction.)

Following the incorrect sign led me towards the Athletes’ Village, and while it was still supported with scaffolding, I can still happily declare it will outdo Delhi’s Village for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

However, having spent a week working in that Commonwealth Games Village in 2010, London wouldn’t need much more than a two-star rating to surpass it.

Athletes’ Villages are rarely impressive buildings, and London’s is no different, but you’d expect the complex to adequately house and accommodate the athletes.

The Olympic Stadium, situated in a small gully about half a kilometre from Stratford Underground station, can’t be seen until you are only two or three hundred metres away, and the stadium itself doesn’t boast impressive architecture to rival Beijing’s Bird’s Nest.

If you’re wondering, those last two points are both negatives.

Sydney’s ANZ Stadium can be seen from as far away as four or five kilometres, so whenever you drive by you are reminded, if not of the 2000 Olympics, then at least of the stadium’s presence in western Sydney. London doesn’t have this.

Furthermore, the 2012 stadium’s design (relatively flat and circular) is aesthetically unexceptional. The exterior is rather old and boring; it is nowhere near as impressive as Melbourne’s much smaller AAMI Park, for example, which cost half as much to build.

Adjacent to the Olympic stadium is the aquatic centre, which could best be described as an eyesore, or to speak more politically, underwhelming. In that assessment it is not dissimilar to the main arena across the road.

We’ve seen impressive stadia from Germany and South Africa during recent FIFA World Cups; from New Zealand, principally through Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium, at last year’s Rugby World Cup, and from Beijing in 2008. These don’t just help their event leave a legacy. They demonstrate improvements and achievements in technology and engineering, and leave their countries a first-class facility for the decades to come.

London’s 80,000-seater stadium is advertised as eco-friendly (merely a requirement these days), but it fails to paint London in a positive light. Luckily there are buildings in the CBD like the Shard of Glass (a skyscraper to be completed in time for the Games) that will give a better impression of the city.

And there’s no point betting where the Olympic flame will sit.

The 35-metre high wire structure sitting right behind the stadium could only be there for one purpose. While it is different and won’t play to everyone’s taste, it can be used as a signpost by patrons trying to find their way to the stadium, although you would think the Organising Committee will have proper signage installed by the time the Games begin.

Surrounding the stadium is meant to be the Olympic Park. At the moment, it could be more accurately called the ‘Olympic Construction Site’ because the whole complex is still being completed.

There’s plenty of time to have this finished, but a couple of weeks of rain could make things interesting.

There has been plenty of publicity about the future of the Olympic Park after the Games. This will likely be determined by whether a football team takes on the stadium as their new home ground.

There was interest from Tottenham Hotspur but it appears West Ham, providing they overcome legal challenges from Leyton Orient and Spurs, will move into the stadium for the 2014/2015 football season.

Whether the Hammers’ move to the Olympic stadium is a successful one remains to be seen. At the nearby Stratford City Westfields, a new West Ham shop was opened late last year but folded in less than a couple of months.

The Westfields will be a big hit during the Olympics. It is situated between the Olympic Site and the Underground station and includes a casino which will give fans, and I guess athletes, a way to spend their evenings during the Games.

Better still, the shopping centre will give the Olympic site something Olympic Park in Sydney hasn’t really had – some real atmosphere after the Games. I was at Homebush earlier in the week and it was good to see a small commercial district finally giving the area some much-needed life.

But London is a fantastic city with plenty of sights and history, meaning there is no reason why it can’t host a great Olympics.

The transport system in London is outstanding (the tube is among the world’s best metropolitan train systems) and it will help the Games run smoothly.

But the modest funding compared to the billions thrown at Beijing by the Chinese Government could undermine London’s event. You only have to look at the quality of stadia to get an idea.

And there seems to be a lack of interest from the London public about the Games.

The locals weren’t talking about it while I was there. Most of the talk was about the English Premier League, and more specifically, Arsene Wegner’s issues at Arsenal.

There certainly isn’t the excitement there was in Sydney five or six months out.

In London, I couldn’t honestly tell the city was about to host the biggest (or second-biggest, depending who you talk to) sporting event in the world.

There weren’t many signs or banners (although there is a faulty countdown clock in Trafalgar Square), no ads on the sides of buses, and I didn’t see one TV commercial. There was certainly no rival to John Clarke’s The Games mockumentary that aired just before the 2000 Olympics. Something just didn’t feel right.

It could be because this will be London’s third time hosting. Or perhaps it’s an indication that the Olympics don’t mean as much as they once did, especially in a first-world country like England. Maybe it will be better to reserve judgement for a few months.

One thing is certain: for London’s Games to impress like those in Beijing or Sydney a lot more work has to be done. The Olympic site must be finished, the city has to get itself in the mood and the locals need to come to the party.

With the world watching, London wouldn’t want to blow it.

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