All eyes are on London As the greatest sporting event in the
world unfolds this summer. Stephen Guy tells you what to expect—on the field
and off it
A Summer Like No Other’ promises the slogan. ‘The biggest
festival the UK has ever seen’ echoes another. "We want this to be the
greatest show on earth," says the chairman of the London Olympics, Lord
Seb Coe. London is fired up to throw its largest, most ambitious, most
disruptive and expensive party in its history. It’s the final countdown to the
2012 London Olympics and Paralympics.
the final
countdown to the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics
The challenge facing the party planners after the UK pipped
Paris in winning the Games in 2005 was how to make the London Olympics
distinctive, something unique to London. Beijing 2008 was hallmarked by its
spectacular opening ceremony, Sydney 2000 for its street party atmosphere,
Barcelona 1992 for regenerating the city. The answer is to serve up alongside
the sport the biggest arts and cultural festival in the history of the
Olympics, powered by the creative energy and diversity of the world’s most
international city. In the process, East London, where the Olympic Park is sited,
has gained a sparkling new identity and grabbed attention away from the West
End.
London’s new Olympic quarter
the Olympic Park
in East London
Historically, the eastern reaches of London were the city’s
poor relation and the settlement area for waves of impoverished immigrants over
the centuries. In the grand scheme of things, the eastern fringes were out of
mainstream radar range except to artists seeking cheap studio space.
But at a stroke East London’s fortunes dramatically changed
when the proposal to build the centre piece Olympic Park in Stratford became a
reality, propelling East London into the national spotlight. Not so long ago
Stratford was known for its shabby station and shopping centre, a theatre and a
high street stranded in a hostile one-way system, with the whole district
surrounded by semi-derelict industrial hinterlands.
Anish Kapoor to
design iconic landmark for Olympic Park
That former landscape is now the stylish and already iconic
Olympic Park set within 250 acres of landscaped grassland, trees and gardens,
and with three natural rivers flowing through it. It is one of the largest
urban parks constructed in Europe in the last 150 years. The park is furnished
with outstanding and award-winning architecture, such as Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics
Centre, the elegantly sweeping Velodrome and Anish Kapoor’s 115m-high
Arcelor-Mittal Orbit observation tower, a bright red swirling roller coaster of
a sculpture. At one point between the buildings there is a stunning vista of
distant city skyscrapers. Nestling up to the Olympic Park is a gigantic new
Westfield shopping mall boasting nearly 400 shops, the biggest in Europe, they
say. Together, these mammoth developments have completely reinvented the area.
Olympics-Westfield-Stratford have blurred into a single identity, modestly
called Westfield Stratford City. Ask a Londoner about the Olympics and they are
as likely to associate it with the words ‘Stratford’ or ‘West-field’ as
‘athletics’.
Newly opened Westfield doubles up as the gateway to the Olympic
Park. The vast majority of sports fans will arrive via Stratford station
(technically there are two, Stratford and Stratford International—the latter an
optimistic misnomer as no international trains stop there) and will have to
filter through the mall to get to the Olympic Park. Stratford is now a major
travel hub and only seven minutes away from central London on a fleet of
non-stop Javelin trains. In the old days, the journey took 45 minutes.
Newly opened
Westfield doubles up as the gateway to the Olympic Park
Westfield is already a major hit with shoppers and I’m told
it gets jam-packed in the afternoon and at weekends. So when I went for a
recce, I arrived early in the morning and it was quiet and calm. Surprisingly
light and airy for a shopping mall, much of it is outdoors with loads of cafés
and restaurants lining the walkways. It’s clearly intended as a destination to
hang out as well as shop. So when you visit the Games, don’t forget your
wallet. I do wonder though how Westfield will cope with the Olympic throng when
overcrowding is already said to be a problem. Be prepared for a crush.
