TWO YEARS TO GO - JULY 27th

Looking forward to these things on the 27th July, from the BBC:


There'll be a special programme on BBC One at 2.15 in the afternoon with Sophie Raworth and Jake Humphrey reporting live on the inaugural event in the stadium and reflecting all the activity going on.
We'll see some top athletes in action in the 2012 arenas with highlights including a bike whizzing round the track at the Velodrome - and the first sprint on a track within the main stadium. Indeed, we can confirm that the man performing there will be Michael Johnson - the gold medal hero of the Atlanta Games and BBC Sport's top athletics pundit.
We'll be revealing the new BBC London 2012 website - which will bring together all the information about 2012 in one place, so covering not just sport but also news and culture and events.


Link (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/rogermosey/2010/07/how_does_one_of_the.html)

From a plane this weekend

http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/2956/img35720olystairsm.jpg

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/8059/img35720olyst2sm.jpg

I am looking forward to next week..........:cheers:

http://press.discovery.com/uk/dsc/programs/london-2012-aquatics-centre-megabuild-james-crackn/

London 2012 Aquatics Centre Megabuild with James Cracknell another programme
to watch for 27th on the discovery channel.

Magic FM's Neil Fox will also be celebrating the milestone by presenting his Breakfast show live from the 34th floor of the BT Tower

If you've always fancied a trip up the tower they're running a competition to be there for the occassion.

http://www.magic.co.uk/Article.asp?id=1868187&spid=

I was there at the weekend - couple of hundred on flickr if you're interested.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesup/sets/72157624587055782/

First London 2012 shop opening tomorrow as well. It'll be at St Pancras.

I was there at the weekend - couple of hundred on flickr if you're interested.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesup/sets/72157624587055782/

Amazing!

But...is this meant to be like this?

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4073/4831256410_c23eb90aab_b.jpg

and the bbc page is?

2 years to go.......TODAY!


:cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

http://i27.tinypic.com/1115i5i.jpg

See>
http://www.london2012.com/splash/index.phpeers: :cheers: :cheers:

and the bbc page is?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/2012

BBC News 24 coverage this morning was rubbish. Showed the old renders of the aquatics centre and then implied an aerial view shot of the Velodrone was the Aquatics centre.

BBC Breakfast News was great, you had the wrong channel on!

BBC Breakfast News was great, you had the wrong channel on!

Wasn't up in time....

The last 5 years have gone so quickly. I remember the winning bid announcement like it was yesterday.

The last 5 years have gone so quickly. I remember the winning bid announcement like it was yesterday.

I think we all do lol! One of the best moments in my lifetime :P

I tuned in and all I could see was Boris the Barclays bonkers biker cycling round a rather pathetic and rather hastily painted track (suprised it was'nt blue!)

Was'nt Chris Hoy supposed to do this?

Get the party started - London will be the star of 2012 (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23859904-forget-the-party-people---london-will-be-the-star-of-the-olympics.do)
Nick Curtis
26.07.10

Never mind the sport: London is set for four weeks of fantastic entertainment as host city of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Apart from the opening and closing ceremonies of both sporting extravaganzas — for which the Oscar-winning British film directors Stephen Daldry and Danny Boyle are spearheading a team of internationally renowned talent — there will be parties, concerts, events and spectacles taking place across the city, potentially including light shows at London landmarks and performances on the Thames.

Live sites around the city will offer both big-screen coverage of Olympic events and entertainment by stars of the calibre of Mick Jagger and Robbie Williams, plus performances by Britain's leading arts, opera and dance companies. The kind of gymnastic and acrobatic acts Simon Cowell unearthed in Britain's Got Talent could also be included, as could large-scale Bollywood dance numbers to please both Londoners and the international crowd.

Sites are planned for Victoria Park in Hackney, which can accommodate 40,000 people, and Potters Fields near City Hall, for about 6,000 (there is also a permanent Olympic live site at Woolwich, one of several around the country). Other London locations, for 5,000 to 6,000 people, are to be confirmed at Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank and at King's Cross — near the terminal for the Javelin train to the Olympic site.

But the biggest party of all will be at Hyde Park. City Hall and the Royal Parks are negotiating a multi-screen, multi-stage venue in the park that will bring sport and spectacle to up to 60,000 people a day, from 11am to 11pm over the 17 days of the Olympics. No names are confirmed yet as the project is out to tender among producers, but organisers speak of “big international and national names” — undoubtedly of the magnitude of Madonna or a re-reformed Led Zeppelin — plus companies from blue-chip British flagship venues like the National Theatre and Royal Opera House.

Alongside sport and live and filmed performance, there are plans for “experiential”, interactive entertainments along the lines of Coke's environmental pavilion at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, which drew 2,000 visitors an hour and included a Wii game where punters played a polar bear looking for an ice floe. What's more, entrance to the Hyde Park events, like those at the other live sites, is planned to be completely free.

Tickets will be bookable online, with the possibility of some admissions on the day. (As in so many areas of the 2012 games, this is a careful balancing act. Since some people who book free tickets for events invariably fail to turn up, organisers don't want vast empty tracts of space at Hyde Park: similarly, they don't want thousands of people waiting for hours for admission, as at Vancouver, “which introduced the new Olympic sport of queuing”.) The cost of the entertainment at the live sites is to be met by key sponsors, with the possibility of commercial events at Hyde Park in the run-up to the Games.

But if you can't get tickets to top events at the stadium, velodrome or aquatic centre, or a ringside seat to the opening or closing ceremonies, or even make it along to Hyde Park or the other big screen parties, don't despair.

Mayor Boris Johnson is negotiating with local authorities to relax restrictions on street parties and will supply cash to “animate” each London borough, “which could mean lamp-post banners or could mean a party in Bromley park to coincide with the opening ceremony” according to the Mayor's director of marketing, Dan Ritterband. (City Hall is also working on an online diary and phone app that will list all sporting and cultural events across London during the Olympics, and afterwards, as part of the Games' legacy.)

Besides, over the next two years, the Olympics will be all around us. Ritterband says that the city will be “dressed” with a view to accentuating its beauty and its famous landmarks, rather than swamping the streets with Olympic branding and streetlamp posters. One intriguing prospect is for a video screen which could actually rise from the Thames. And it's not just about making Londoners feel welcome at the Games, but also people from around the UK and the rest of the world.

In addition to the 70,000 volunteers to be recruited by the Olympic authorities to help on the Stratford site, the Greater London Authority will recruit 8,000 “ambassadors or hosts” to raise “the level of visitor welcome” across the city. They join a raft of celebrity ambassadors, both formal and informal, promoting the games in various ways, from Stella McCartney — who will design Team GB's sporting kit — to enthusiastic national treasure Stephen Fry and sporting legends such as Lord Coe, David Beckham and Sally Gunnell. And the mascots Wenlock and Mandeville — named for the villages of Much Wenlock, which inspired the launch of the modern Olympics, and Stoke Mandeville, where the Paralympics were founded — will be everywhere.

Hundreds of actors will take the colourful, cyclopean characters to schools throughout London and around the country (once problems with the costumes, which prevented them from freely moving their limbs, are solved). They will also feature as soft toys from beanie to giant size, on stationery and lunch boxes, and on clothing from festival sponsors.

John Lewis will this week start selling mascot toys in the merchandising concession in its Oxford Street branch and will gradually roll out the merchandising to the rest of its store network (the company is an “anchor tenant” of the new Westfield shopping centre at Stratford, overlooking the Olympic site). The two characters were specifically designed to appeal to the young and to digital consumers, so they already have a huge presence on social networking sites such as Facebook.

“One of our ambitions has always been to make these everyone's games,” says Bill Morris, the former BBC stalwart who now glories in the title of director of culture, ceremonies, education and live sites for London 2012. He says Stephen Daldry and his three co-producers leapt at the chance to oversee the four major ceremonies, and to re-examine established Olympic protocols around torch-bearing and medal-giving. Danny Boyle's reaction was “instant passion about the creative challenge but also a sense of civic duty, that this was what he wanted to do”, when he was asked to direct the opening ceremony.

The creatives who will helm the other Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies are yet to be appointed, so planning remains at an early stage, although Boyle and Daldry insist they won't be falling back on their greatest movie hits: no dancing Slumdogs or Billy Elliot boys. Daldry talks about “taking the opening event outside the stadium and into London”, and Boyle has talked about taking inspiration from the East End's dockland heritage, and “the river [as] the focal point of the city”. It seems likely the Thames may feature in the opening ceremony and throughout the entertainment accompanying the games — perhaps in the final stages of the torch relay, perhaps involving that submersible video screen.

In all the ceremonies, everyone involved agrees, there will be a balance between celebrating London's history and its present and future as a multicultural city (where many Olympic teams will find a ready-made home crowd) in a world emerging from recession. There will be none of the bombast of the Beijing ceremonies, or the tweeness (buses, bobbies and Beckham hoofing a football) of the British hand-over ceremony there.

“I don't think we should feel the need to compete with Beijing,” says Daldry. Boyle talks about harnessing crowds as part of the spectacle, rather than as mere spectators. The opening and closing ceremonies for London's 2012 games, and the accompanying entertainments, will be about inclusion, reflecting an inclusive city.

“We're not even really thinking about Beijing any more,” says Bill Morris. “We will be celebrating what an amazing city London is, and the UK more generally — our unique position in the world. The morning after the opening ceremony, just before the sport starts, London should feel that it is walking on water.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympic_games/london_2012/8856764.stm

Boris had a go! first lap of 2012 velodrome:lol:

AFv0VEEVA5U

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs232.snc4/38923_414385127407_259479457407_4886749_3769388_n.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4127/4835063006_b7ca74140b_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4127/4835058874_5c34fb103f_b.jpg

The last 5 years have gone so quickly. I remember the winning bid announcement like it was yesterday.

Me as well...I was probably the only frog at Trafalgar Square that day, 'drowned' in the british human tide lol. I remember being offered a 'pin's'(sorry my mind goes blank) from a volunteer which said 'London 2012 Candidate City' & me going :' I'll have the Paris one please' with a big smile, at first she was surprised but ended up smiling back at me. I still have that nice pin hooked on a board. I was in two minds as London was the city where I lived at the time, a city that I deeply love, like a second home to me, and of course as a frenchman, a once in a lifetime possibility * to experience in my country the world's greatest sports event...therefore I backed Paris and was disappointed after the announcement, falling at the very last hurdle to get the Games was very hard to swallow, even more given that Paris was supposed to be 'ultra favourite'...but after a short while I accepted London's victory, the atmosphere was incredible on the spot, with Kelly Holmes jumping for joy, 'M People' singing their winning track & so forth...I was sad but happy for you guys, I knew the Games would be fab in London anyway.:) Ironically people in London experience 2 extreme feelings in less than 24 hours, an immense happiness that particular day, and horror the next day. Losing the Games was so meaningless compared to what those 56 victims (& hundreds of injured people) had been through...

So, 2 years left...I can't beleive it either, time flies, gonna be a great show, I look forward to it :).

* hopefully there will be another chance for me with Paris 2024, before I die...time will tell.:goodnight

^^ You're right, it was a surreal time Jex. It was also the time of the G8 Summit in London and Live 8, there was so much going on in London at the time..........both good and horrible...........where have those 5 years gone?

Hopefully Paris will have it's moment in the limelight in 2024.

Anyway, back to London, just 2 years to go now. By then we will have the Shard and the Pinnacle and London will look it's absolute best (give or take a few cranes!). I can't wait for the spotlight to fall on our great city and for people from all over the world to get a glimpse of 21st century London and it's ancient monuments, Victorian grandeur and gleaming skyscrapers, the city of the past, present and future. There's no other city like it in the world. Go London!

But the biggest party of all will be at Hyde Park. City Hall and the Royal Parks are negotiating a multi-screen, multi-stage venue in the park that will bring sport and spectacle to up to 60,000 people a day, from 11am to 11pm over the 17 days of the Olympics. No names are confirmed yet as the project is out to tender among producers, but organisers speak of “big international and national names” — undoubtedly of the magnitude of Madonna or a re-reformed Led Zeppelin — plus companies from blue-chip British flagship venues like the National Theatre and Royal Opera House.
Sounds exciting! Although I don't think someone like Madonna or Led Zeppelin will play for free in Hyde Park.

London 2012 is going to be crazy!

Cheers Snowy, yes hopefully in 2024 for the Century's games (1924-2024), I'll have to see..:)

Back on topic, you forgot to mention 20 FS!! lol I just love this building(must be part of the rare ones to enjoy it), and 'Beetham Tower' so stunning, you guys are going to have one of the prettiest skylines in Europe in the next few years, I particularly look forward to seeing the Pinnacle rise, I love the Shard as well but to me Pinnacle is likely to look even more amazing...I just can"t wait...:wave:

I believe LiveNation are organising the Hyde Park concerts? They manage Madonna, Mariah and practically every Big name in Music.

I believe LiveNation are organising the Hyde Park concerts? They manage Madonna, Mariah and practically every Big name in Music.

And with all eyes on London during the games, I'm sure that a series of major headliners would be more than happy to have some Olympic stardust sprinkled over them:)

I'm closely following all the olympic threads! I really hope I can be there. And since London is not that far away from Amsterdam I think I will.