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London looks forward to hosting 2012
games
London's Olympic reality is still a run-down area of the East End. Now
comes the hard work. The British capital won the right to host the 2012
Games on Wednesday, basing its bid on the regeneration of the east
London suburb with landmarks from Wimbledon to Wembley.
The transformation will begin immediately.
"This will pay dividends for all of us," British Prime Minister Tony
Blair said from Gleneagles, Scotland, where he was attending the G-8
summit. "To have the Olympic Games in 2012 is going to be a huge thing
for the country."
The International Olympic Committee awarded the Olympics to London at
its meeting in Singapore. London beat Paris, Madrid, New York and
Moscow.
"We have the opportunity to do what we always dreamed about, getting
more young people into sport," said London bid leader Sebastian Coe, a
two-time Olympic champion in the 1,500 meters who was in Singapore for
the vote. "This is our moment. It's massive. It's huge. This is the
biggest prize in sport."
Coe will stay on to head the organizing committee for 2012, while
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell will be appointed the Olympics Minister.
Blair predicted the games would prove to be a "legacy" for both Britain
and the Olympic movement, saying Britain's bid was strong because of the
vision it provided for sports and future generations.
Blair arrived in Scotland just before the announcement. He had been in
Singapore drumming up support for the bid.
"It's not every day in this job that you punch the air and do a little
jig and embrace the person standing next to you," Blair said.
Thousands of Britons watched the vote on large screen televisions in
Trafalgar Square and the site of Olympic Park in Stratford. The
announcement was met with cheers, dancing, flag waving and a V-shaped
flyover by nine jets leaving trails of red, white and blue.
Commuters cheered as the London's win was announced on the Underground
subway system.
"It's a great opportunity for every city to have the Olympic Games,"
said Athens native Fotis Saltaferis, who has lived in London for 10
years. "It's great for the city, it's great for morale, it's great for
everything."
"Historic victory for Britain," blared the front page of London's
Evening Standard newspaper. "Capital pips Paris in dramatic vote."
Unlike Paris, which had been favored from the start and already had the
majority of its venues built, London still has to build its most crucial
venue - a stadium.
The main Olympic complex will be in Stratford, east London, where a
500-acre plot of land will be transformed into an 80,000-seat stadium
and village, and then turned into new homes and businesses.
Four arenas, where fencing, handball and modern pentathlon events are to
be held, need to be built. An aquatic center and velodrome are already
under construction, as are two arenas under the vast white canopy of the
nearby Millennium Dome, where basketball and gymnastics will be held.
Other venues already exist: Wimbledon will host the tennis tournament on
grass; the soccer finals will be held at the rebuilt Wembley Stadium;
beach volleyball will be next to the Prime Minister's residence at No.
10 Downing Street; softball will be at Regents Park; archery at Lord's
cricket stadium; and triathlon in Hyde Park.
Bid officials said London was the only contending city that proposed
having the athletes' village located within the Olympic Park area. Every
athlete would have a room at the village, with extra accommodation
provided at satellite venues for sailing and rowing. Half the athletes
would be able to walk to their venues.
After London won the games, shares in construction, transport and
advertising companies jumped on the London Stock Exchange.
"Regardless of the debts racked up for it, these things, whether it's
trains, or motorways, whatever, improvements in transport infrastructure
is good for the economy as a whole and they last for a long time,"
Economy.com's European analyst Paul Guest said.
London's win has also erased its previous troubles in bidding for and
hosting events, notably the years of delays and budget problems in
building a new Wembley and losing the 2005 athletics world championships
because of failure to find funding for a stadium in Picketts Lock.
"I was impressed by the plans to develop sporting facilities over the
next years, and I would like to underline the fact that Britain will now
have a permanent, state-of-the-art stadium for athletics, and this is
something we are very pleased about," IAAF president Lamine Diack said.
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