OLYMPIC NEWS UPDATES 2007

November 7: The designs for the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, are revealed today by London 2012, as it announced construction of the venue will start ahead of schedule. The design features a ‘stadium bowl’ holding the 25,000 permanent seats, surrounded by 55,000 demountable seats that will taken away after the Games. An Olympic Stadium with such a large demountable element and mix of temporary and permanent seating has never been attempted before.

November 1: Over a third of cabling and equipment has now been installed in underground tunnels, the Olympic Delivery Authority announced today.

October 30: The demolition of the tallest building on the Olympic Park site begins today.

October 23: The first formal edition of the Transport Plan for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games providing accessible and reliable transport for some 800,000 spectators on the busiest day of competition during the Games and ensuring that athletes, the stars of the show, get to their event quickly.

October 19: Winners of the design for the Central Park Bridge - the main pedestrian footbridge in the Olympic Park are announced as HParc (short for Henghan Peng Architects), with structural engineers ABK, who came up with a concept (pictured right) that sculpts a form in the landscape with potential for a brightly coloured lit deck that changes colour and look depending on the events taking place.

October 4 : Progress on the site of the Olympic Stadium accelerates with nearly half the buildings now demolished, temporary bridges being installed and a programme of work beginning to remove thousands of tonnes of soil to create the correct ground levels.

October 2 : The VeloDream competition is launched this month for school pupils up to 16 from across the UK to work in groups to come up with their most imaginative and fantastical ideas for designing a VeloPark - a collection of facilities for different cycling disciplines for the future. The winners will work with the actual designers of the 2012 Cycling venue.

September 27 : The National Lottery launches ‘Prize Dive’, their new 2012-themed instant win game.In the game you take a dive to score a win of up to £15,000. As well as the opportunity for big win, you also play a part in raising the funding required to stage the London 2012 Games and leave a lasting legacy.

September 27 : Olympic Games sponsor VISA launch their 'Olympics of the Imagination' art competition today. Young people aged 10 to 14 are being invited to send in artwork based around the theme ‘One Planet, One Dream’.

September 15: Almost 2,000 people have the opportunity to look at the cleaning and clearing of the Olympic Park site first hand as it opens to the public for the first time.

September 13: The VeloDream competition for schools in a video featuring Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell and David Higgins, Chief Executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority.The competition is about encouraging schools and schoolchildren across the UK to compete, to come up with designs for a VeloPark and VeloDrome for a future Olympics, and the winning team will get to work with the London 2012 design team.

September 7 : The first phase of the £104 million Stratford Regional Station (SRS) upgrade has been completed incorporating an upgrade involving widening a 100m stretch of platform to an extra 3.2m at its widest point to provide more room for passengers and prevent overcrowding. Platform signals were also modified, while the track and overhead lines were re-laid and re-aligned to fit the platform’s extension.

September 5 : The first group of school and college leavers, many drawn from the five Host Boroughs, join the London 2012 Organising Committee.

September 3 : The London 2012 Information Stall reaches the end of its summer season in Trafalgar Square to mark the Liberty festival, promoting equality for disabled and Deaf Londoners.

August 29: On August 24th next year, during the Closing Ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, there will be a moment when the Olympic Flag is passed from the Mayor of Beijing to the Mayor of London. That moment marks the official start of the London Olympiad and its four year programme of Cultural, Educational and Ceremonial events.

July 16: The heightened public interest in climate change issues prompts the 2012 team to promise commitment to delivering ‘low carbon’ Games. Two specialist consultants are helping with initial recommendations.

July 11: Another major company, EDF, becomes `London 2012 Tier 1 Partner.  Today’s launch in Greenwich Park by EDF was a double occasion as they also announced their support for London 2012 as a Sustainability Partner*.

June 26 : The 2012 Roadshow reaches to the Outsider Festival in Rothiemurchus in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park near Aviemore in the Highlands of Scotland. This impressive location played host to three days of music, comedy, film, and loads of sporting activity both on and off site.

June 22 : Dugald, Chair of the Legacy Trust UK talked to 500 members of the arts world on the Trust’s work with London 2012. This newly formed Trust has a particular remit to help create and support cultural, sporting and arts-based activities in the run up to 2012 in order to ensure a lasting legacy throughout the UK, post the Games.

June 21 : Bill Morris and the Culture team updated the arts sector on plans for the Cultural Olympiad.

June 11 : A major focus of the archaeological work this week for Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS) and Pre-Construct Archaeology (PCA) has been directed towards the recording of the remains of a World War II anti-aircraft gun battery in the north-west of the Olympic Park, just east of the river Lea.

June 4 : This morning London 2012 launched its new brand at a special event in North London and faced very mixed reception from the public. Developers of the brand say "It’s not about the shape. It’s not about the colours. It’s about what we can do with it - there is a lot more to see, and you’ll see it soon."

May 22 : London 2012 organised for Zoe Edge, a Boccia silver medallist for Team GB at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games to meet 70 primary school children from Hackney at the SportsAbility tournament. The children have been coached in the art of Boccia - a Paralympic sport that is similar to the French game of boules or petanque.

May 12/3 : Manchester sees the climax of a week long festival of world-class Paralympic sport giving British Paralympic athletes the experience of competing in front of a home crowd against world-class opposition, which will aid their preparation for 2012.

May 3 : Almost a quarter of the Olympic Park site has now been cleared, with the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) well on track for its target of clearing most of the site by 2008. 

April 29 : London 2012 joined the Vaisakhi festival, the Sikh New Year Festival. celebrations in Trafalgar Square setting up a stand and discussing progress with Londoners on all aspects of the Games. 

April 23 : With the Olympics in mind, London 2012 security department joined the Metropolitan Police Service and  media people for the first public sighting of the Met’s  new 'Special Operations Room' in Lambeth. Known as 'GT' - it contains a range of specialist equipment (with access to over 10,000 CCTV cameras) and represents a 400% increase in the emergency services’ capabilities.

April 19 : The start of spring sees an increased amount of wildlife activity, along with an increase in the amount of ecology work being carried out on the Olympic Park. 

April 18 : The Sustainable Development Strategy launched in January and aiming to reuse or recycle at least 90% of demolition materials is on track with 95% currently recycled or stored for reuse.

April 17 : London 2012 launches a UK-wide search for people with a story that shows an ‘Olympic Spirit’, for a new film and will be holding casting sessions over the next couple of weeks. 

April 4 : An important milestone for the Olympic Delivery Authority: the  completion of the first tunnel in which powerlines across the Olympic Park site are buried.

April 3 : The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) marked its first birthday today. 

March 14 : London 2012 announced its first domestic sponsor, Lloyds TSB, at a launch event involving gymnasts, the London Eye and past Olympians.

February 25 : As of today there are only 2012 days - or 287 more Sundays - until the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games which run alongside the Olympic Games ... completely integrated for the first time and this was an integral part of the successful London bid.

February 22 : Today we celebrate a magic number - 5!
The countdown to the Olympics at 14.25 today is 5 years, 5 months. 5 days, 5 hours and 5 minutes.

February 15 : Morag, ODA Head of Procurement presents a conference case study on the procurement process used to select Delivery Partner, CLM using a new procedure called Competitive Dialogue for which they have since been cited by the Office of Government Commerce as they develop best practice guides.

February 14 : To celebrate Valentines Day, Hackney Council held its second annual ‘I love Hackney’ fair in Town Hall Square ... as one of the five Host Boroughs for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games there is a unique opportunity to improve the image of Hackney. The development of the rail infrastructure for 2012 will bring a ‘tube-style’ service to Hackney and – with it – more visitors to enjoy the borough’s special cultural and leisure attractions.

February 08: Demolition of the old, disused sports facility in Eton Manor, in the north of the Olympic Park, has now been completed.

February 07 : When the Berlin wall fell Bonn lost many of its Governmental tenants. It was lucky that one of the young organisations looking for a home shortly afterwards was the International Paralympic Committee. It is now housed in two specially adapted and accessible chateaux near the city centre.

February 06: This week saw the submission of the Olympic Park Planning Applications in what marks the end of long process for the ODA’s Planning team and a significant moment in delivering our vision for the Olympic Park and the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley..

January 26: In London, Barking and Dagenham Council has unveiled its Fans project to give free access to gyms and swimming pools for the borough’s top young sportsmen and women and Ealing is looking forward to a visit by Seb Coe to field questions and talk about what the Games will do for residents.

January 25: Work starts on extending the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) into the heart of the Olympic Park. The extension sees a DLR line built at Straford International with a link to Eurostar services by 2010. There will be stops at Stratford, Stratford High Street, Abbey Road, West Ham, Star Lane and Canning Town.

January 24: With all the talk about meeting construction deadlines for the Olympics, Seb Coe finds great comfort when he visits the newly built Neasden Temple (BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir). The temple was built in two and a half years using a volunteer workforce and cost £12 million - all from charitable donations.

January 23: Seb Coe took Prime Minister Tony Blair and Minister for Culture, Media & Sport Tessa Jowell on a boat tour of the waterways of East London, marking the launch of the Olympic Delivery Authority’s Sustainable Development Strategy. They travelled to the two waterways that pass either side of the Olympic Stadium.

January 23: Tony Blair and Chairman of London 2012, Sebastian Coe, promise that the Olympics in London will be the most environmentally friendly and sustainable yet in a podcast for the Downing Street website as a milestone is reached in the preparations - 2012 days to go before the event begins. A Sustainable Development Strategy, published today, promises to cut carbon emissions, reduce water consumption and make sustainability fundamental to all Olympic procurement.

January 22: Official ‘Blue Badge’ tourist guides have been learning details about the new Olympic development area and attending intensive training courses on east London’s past, present and future in the context of the Games. For example, they learned that that Gandhi was once a resident of Bromley-by-Bow!

January 18: Rev. Kelvin Woolmer, the new vicar at St Paul’s in Stratford, is also charged with providing pastoral care for the construction workers on the Olympic Park site which lies within the parish.

January 10: Docklands Light Railway (DLR) awards the first of three major construction contracts to build the £211m DLR extension to Stratford International, a key part of the transport plans for the 2012 Games. A Skanska and GrantRail joint venture appointed to carry out the first physical work for the scheme, valued at approximately £39m.

See plans* of the Olympic Park during the games and the Olympic Park after the games and the Detailed plan of the Olympic Village

*These plans and full details of the progress towards the Games can be seen on the 'official' blog for the London 2012 project at http://blog.london2012.com/