OLYMPIC GAMES

Lord Coe claims he can deliver the 'most anticipated' event in memory as countdown to London Games hits landmark
With 100 days until the opening ceremony, the man indelibly linked with delivering the London 2012 Olympics will be fretting nervously, desperately hoping for the best while at the same time fearing the worst.
But once his beloved Chelsea's clash with Barcelona on Wednesday is out of the way, Lord Coe will go back to attempting to project an air of intense confidence in his team's ability to deliver the biggest sporting show on earth.
"One hundred days has got that ring of 'it's here'. It is a big moment," says Coe, chair of the London 2012 organising committee, Locog.
"The really important facet of all this is that it's 100 days before we welcome the world. Of course, there has been interest in other Games. But I don't think I've ever witnessed a level of excitement at this level in so many different countries for what we're doing."
In the face of a towering in-tray, from final preparations for the torch relay to the completion of the controversial ticket sales process and mounting fears of protests, Coe claims the London Olympics is the most anticipated since the modern Games began in 1896.
The double Olympic gold medallist and former Tory MP fishes out a spread of international newspaper cuttings, saying he has had an epiphany in recent months as he has travelled the world. He is just back from updating the Association of National Olympic Committees on final preparations in Moscow on Sunday.
"It's really occurred to me in the last few weeks. From Dar es Salaam to Marrakech, Los Angeles to Tokyo and Beijing – I don't think I've ever witnessed that level of excitement, particularly among the elite competitors," claims Coe from Locog's offices on the 23rd floor of a Canary Wharf tower overlooking the Olympic Park.
"It was a really good wake-up call. We are delivering for 200 countries and many of them have never been as excited about coming to an Olympic Games."
There are longstanding fears that the conditions to which host cities must sign up will stifle the atmosphere – from obsessive control of the Olympic brand to the huge security operation and the "Zil" lanes for transporting competitors, the media and VIPs around the capital.
But Coe promises that the party won't be dampened, even with the 35,000 security guards and police on duty inside and outside the venues and the array of military hardware including a warship on the river Thames and rocket launchers on Blackheath.
"I'm a proud Londoner. I want to show London at its best, the UK as well. I want London to be seen at ease with itself. That's the city I recognise. It's a relaxed city, a great place to be, a great place to celebrate, a great place to be educated," he says.
To that end, he is insistent that organisers will take a relatively relaxed attitude to protests that will inevitably accompany the torch relay, which starts its 70-day tour of the UK in Land's End on 19 May, and to the Games itself.
Protesters claiming that sponsors such as Rio Tinto, Dow and BP are using the Games to "greenwash" their image, and offshoots of the Occupy movement who may use the event as a backdrop to anti-capitalism protests, do not leave Coe unduly worried.
"I don't know if it's inevitable, but we should be realistic. We live in a democracy; we do have a long tradition of peaceful protest," he says.
"As long as that protest doesn't disrupt or become a public order issue or endanger the safety of our competitors or the public, I'm not going to sit here fulminating or becoming completely paranoid about it."
While he was "profoundly depressed" by the antics of the "completely self-indulgent" Trenton Oldfield, who secured blanket media coverage by successfully stopping the Boat Race, he said it was important not to get the threat out of proportion.
"From time to time, you will get people who will use whatever platform is available to them to get their message across. I'm not being cavalier or sanguine about it. It comes with the territory. That is the nature of the country we live in and, on balance, I'd rather live here than anywhere else."
With the 100-day countdown beginning on Wednesday, one of the biggest challenges facing organisers is a simple logistical one. The vision expounded by Coe in 2005 – of a "compact" Games that would not leave any white elephants and use temporary venues in famous central London locations – has left Locog with a big construction task in the final 100 days.
"We are absolutely on the right time lines. But the vision has loaded more work for an organising committee at the back end. We always recognised that, which is why we were keen to get out of the traps quickly," says Coe. "I'd have rather put more pressure on to deliver at the end of the project than be asked what I'm going to do with my permanent water polo venue after the Games."
The other pressing task for organisers is to get the country on board. Much will depend on the reaction to the final tranche of ticket sales. The final batch of 1.2m tickets, aside from 1.5m remaining football tickets, go on sale next month.
Coe accepts it is vital that the sale does not fall victim to the technical issues that dogged earlier sales rounds if public confidence is to be maintained. He insists that organisers are on target to keep a promise that two-thirds of the 1 million who missed out in the opening round of the ballot will get a ticket.
One lingering fear is that the crowds within the venues will be more SW19 (mostly white, middle class and middle aged) than E20 (the new postcode given to the Olympic Park in Stratford).
But Coe says the test events attracted a mixture of fans, and Olympics-linked cultural and community projects have had an encouraging response. "I do spend a lot of time travelling around the country," he says. "The story is there, I see it every day of the week. I was in Becontree and 1,000 new members had joined the leisure centre in January; the diving club 50 yards to the left had tripled its numbers since Beijing because they all want to be Tom Daley. I know it's happening out there.
"I go 10 minutes down the road to Hornchurch and I'm talking to a 16-year-old rock band who have written an Olympic anthem."
He says he has not come face-to-face with Olympic cynics who believe the whole thing is a waste of money in a time of austerity: "I come in on the tube, I'm on public transport. I've been an MP. Anyone who went through the 1992 to 1997 parliament – people were not slow in telling you what they thought. Overwhelmingly, in the cold conversations I have with people on the train, I don't for one minute think people will sit this dance out. I think it will be an extraordinary few weeks.
"I'm quintessentially British. It doesn't feel instinctively right to force-feed people into a funnel of excitement. I just don't think you can do that."
But he remains supremely confident that public excitement will begin to bubble around the torch relay and come to the boil with Danny Boyle's opening ceremony on 27 July.
Coe insists, too, that the most contentious aspect of the 2012 story – the legacy promises made to secure the Games in the first place – are on track to be delivered.
"There is a political consensus that a good sports policy is a good health policy is a good education policy. I don't think there's any question about that. I think we've shifted that dial a long way. It would be quite hard to turn that dial back," he says.
Others are altogether less sure whether momentum can be maintained once the circus has left town and political focus has dulled.
But, before he can look to the future, Coe invokes his experience as a competitor to illustrate the need to focus obsessively on the detail of 100 days that he accepts will make or break the Games.
"It's not at risk of unravelling. But there is not a single person, including me, that doesn't think we've got to do the best work of our lives. This is our time. There are no tomorrows here. We have got to nail this now."

-Owen Gibson

Source:www.guardian.co.uk

Wednesday 18 April sees another major milestone on the Journey to London 2012 as it is 100 days to go until the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony .Queen Elizabeth II will declare the London Olympics open on July 27 but while the stadiums are ready with 100 days to go, question marks hang over the security of the Games and transport.
When the flame is lit, London will become the first city in the modern era to host the Olympics three times, having already had the honour in 1908 and 1948.
Last time the event came to London, Britain was still gripped by the effects of World War II which had ended barely three years earlier and the makeshift approach earned it the label the "austerity Games".
With Britain's economy still in the doldrums, austerity will leave its mark on these Olympics too, albeit to a far lesser extent than in 1948, when competitors were housed in military barracks and university dormitories.
Despite a budget of £9.3 billion , the Games will be on more modest scale than the spectacular 2008 Beijing Olympics at which China announced its growing global presence.
"We are not coming out as a superpower," noted Britain's Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson.
Prime Minister David Cameron is nevertheless promising "the greatest show on Earth" and "a celebration of everything that's great about Britain".
London's bid was based on the promise that hosting the Games would leave a lasting legacy for the city. The International Olympic Committee believes it has achieved its aim so far -- the residents' verdict will only come later.
After a final inspection last month, IOC president Jacques Rogge said London had created "a legacy blueprint" for future Games hosts.
Some of the venues on the Olympic Park, built in a deprived part of east London, will be maintained after the Games, while others will be retained but scaled down.
The two unanswered questions are weighty ones: the ability to get spectators and athletes around an already congested city, and security, 40 years since the the bloody hostage-taking of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Security has cast a shadow since the day after London was awarded the Games, when suicide bombers killed 52 people on the transport system.
A combined force of more than 40,000 soldiers, police and private security guards will be mobilised for what Cameron called the "biggest and most integrated security operation in mainland Britain in our peacetime history".
London Olympics Organising Committee chairman Sebastian Coe is confident of delivering a "safe and secure" event but acknowledges the need to avoid a suffocating security blanket.
"You want people coming to London feeling that they are coming to a city that is celebrating and not overwhelmed by security," Coe told AFP.
"These are an Olympic Games -- they are taking place in London not siege-town. There is a balance to be struck."

Source: AFP

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Queen Elizabeth II will declare the London Olympics open on July 27, but while the stadiums are ready with 100 days to go, question marks hang over the security of the Games and transport.

When the flame is lit, London will become the first city in the modern era to host the Olympics three times, having already had the honour in 1908 and 1948.

Last time the event came to London, Britain was still gripped by the effects of World War II which had ended barely three years earlier and the makeshift approach earned it the label the "austerity Games".

With Britain's economy still in the doldrums, austerity will leave its mark on these Olympics too, albeit to a far lesser extent than in 1948, when competitors were housed in military barracks and university dormitories.

Despite a budget of 9.3 billion ($14.8 billion, 11.2 billion euros), the Games will be on a more modest scale than the spectacular 2008 Beijing Olympics at which China announced its growing global presence.

"We are not coming out as a superpower," noted Britain's Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson.

Prime Minister David Cameron is nevertheless promising "the greatest show on Earth" and "a celebration of everything that's great about Britain".

The job of putting the stamp of Britishness on the opening ceremony has been handed to Danny Boyle, the director of the multiple Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

With the theme "Isles of Wonder", Boyle has promised a fitting curtain-raiser before 10,500 competitors from 204 countries do battle.

When the sport begins, one of the big questions is whether China can maintain its performance of four years ago when on home soil it topped the medals table for the first time.

Two of the stars of those Olympics are set to make a huge impact again, with Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt likely to be the face of the Games, closely followed by US swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight golds in China.

London's bid was based on the promise that hosting the Games would leave a lasting legacy for the city. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) believes it has achieved its aim so far — the residents' verdict will only come later.

After a final inspection last month, IOC president Jacques Rogge said London had created "a legacy blueprint" for future Games hosts.

Some of the venues on the Olympic Park, built in a deprived part of east London, will be maintained after the Games, while others will be retained but scaled down.

The future use of the 80,000-capacity Olympic Stadium has yet to be determined beyond hosting the 2017 World Athletics Championships, although West Ham United football club are among four bidders to take it over.

The long-neglected East End should continue to benefit from the new ultra-modern Stratford rail station as well as the low-cost housing made from some of the Olympic village accommodation and a nature park along the Lee Valley.

"We can already see tangible results in the remarkable regeneration of east London," Rogge said.

The two unanswered questions are weighty ones: the ability to get spectators and athletes around an already congested city; and security, 40 years since the bloody hostage-taking of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Some $6.5 billion has been spent on modernising the transport system, including the world's oldest underground train system, and 48 kilometres (30 miles) of Olympic road lanes should help speed the travel of VIPs.

Ordinary Londoners though are being urged to work from home or spend an extra hour in the pub after work to ease peak-time congestion.

Security has cast a shadow since the day after London was awarded the Games, when suicide bombers killed 52 people on the transport system.

A combined force of more than 40,000 soldiers, police and private security guards will be mobilised for what Cameron called the "biggest and most integrated security operation in mainland Britain in our peacetime history".

Exercises have been held to prepare for every eventuality, but the possibility of disturbances was underlined by a protest swimmer who halted the traditional Oxford-Cambridge University Boat Race this month.

London Olympics Organising Committee chairman, Sebastian Coe is confident of delivering a "safe and secure" event but acknowledges the need to avoid a suffocating security blanket.

"You want people coming to London feeling that they are coming to a city that is celebrating and not overwhelmed by security," Coe told AFP.

"These are Olympic Games — they are taking place in London not siege-town. There is a balance to be struck."

Source: www.jamaicanobserver.com

Fears stringent restrictions on use of terms such as London 2012 will limit economic benefits of Games to capital's economy
Victoria Pendleton will not be able to tweet about tucking into her Weetabix on the morning of race day, or post a video message to fans from her room in the athletes' village.
Pub landlords will be banned from posting signs reading: "Come and watch the London Games from our big screen!"
Fans in the crowd won't be allowed to upload snippets of the day's action to YouTube – or even, potentially, to post their snaps from inside the Olympic Village on Facebook. And a crack team of branding "police", the Games organisers Locog have acknowledged, will be checking every bathroom in every Olympic venue – with the power to remove or tape over manufacturers' logos even on soap dispensers, wash basins and toilets.
With just a little more than three months to go until the opening of the London 2012 Games, attention is increasingly turning to what many legal experts consider to be the most stringent restrictions ever put in place to protect sponsors' brands and broadcasting rights, affecting every athlete, Olympics ticket holder and business in the UK.
Locog insists the protections were essential to secure the contracts that have paid for the Olympics, but some fear the effect could be to limit the economic benefits to the capital's economy – and set a precedent for major national celebrations in future.
Britain already has a range of legal protections for brands and copyright holders, but the Olympic Games demand their own rules. Since the Sydney Games in 2000, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has required bidding governments to commit to introducing bespoke legislation to offer a further layer of legal sanction.
In 2006, accordingly, parliament passed the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act, which, together with the Olympic Symbol (Protection) Act of 1995, offers a special level of protection to the Games and their sponsors over and above that already promised by existing copyright or contract law. A breach of these acts will not only give rise to a civil grievance, but is a criminal offence.
"It is certainly very tough legislation," says Paul Jordan, a partner and marketing specialist at law firm Bristows, which is advising both official sponsors and non-sponsoring businesses on the new laws. "Every major brand in the world would give their eye teeth to have [a piece of legislation] like this. One can imagine something like a Google or a Microsoft would be delighted to have some very special recognition of their brand in the way that clearly the IOC has."
As well as introducing an additional layer of protection around the word "Olympics", the five-rings symbol and the Games' mottoes, the major change of the legislation is to outlaw unauthorised "association". This bars non-sponsors from employing images or wording that might suggest too close a link with the Games. Expressions likely to be considered a breach of the rules would include any two of the following list: "Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve".
Using one of those words with London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver or bronze is another likely breach. The two-word rule is not fixed, however: an event called the "Great Exhibition 2012" was threatened with legal action last year under the Act over its use of "2012" (Locog later withdrew its objection).
A photoshoot promoting easyJet's new routes from London Southend airport was also interrupted by a Locog monitor after local athlete Sally Gunnell was handed a union flag to drape over her shoulders. According to reports, Locog felt this would create too direct an association with her famous pose after winning Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992 (British Airways, rather than easyJet, is the airline sponsor of London 2012).
Locog chose not to comment on the incident, but aspokeswoman said: "If we did not take steps to protect the brand from unauthorised use and ambush marketing, the exclusive rights which our partners have acquired would be undermined. Without the investment of our partners, we simply couldn't stage the Games."
In this climate, according to Chris Moriarty of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, non-sponsoring brands are being forced to seek expensive legal advice on how to stay just the right side of the line.
He cites a campaign by Marks and Spencer, with the slogan On your marks for a summer to remember, which features union flags, an egg and spoon race and an oversized gold medal, neatly dancing around the guidelines. A campaign by Nike called Make it Count, featuring Olympic athletes Mo Farah and Paula Radcliffe has proved an even greater success: a survey of Tweeters found that Nike (a non-sponsor) is the brand they most associated with the Games, instead of Adidas, which paid £100m for official rights.
"Small businesses don't have the resources to have a creative campaign like that, but also, I detect, they are too scared to do anything, because the landscape is so complicated, and there are so many dos and don'ts," says Moriarty. "It would be an awful shame if small businesses were too afraid to gain from the biggest show on earth coming to London."
The CIM has called the restrictions around the London Games too draconian and raised concerns "that a precedent will have been set which unduly prohibits businesses tapping into current national and societal events".
One of the IOC's principal fears in seeking bespoke legislation was around so-called "ambush" marketing, according to Locog, where businesses try to leapfrog or otherwise wriggle around branding rules. At the 2010 World Cup, 36 female Dutch fans were thrown out of a match for wearing orange dresses without logos, in what organisers deemed an ambush campaign by the beer company Bavaria. (Fifa also requires bespoke branding legislation).
Industry experts believe the ambush battleground at the London Games is likely to lie in social media - still relatively new to the Games. "The big opportunity really is going to be in the online space, because there [the law] becomes a little bit more of a grey area, particularly in social media," says Alex Brownsell, news editor of Marketing magazine, "and that's where Locog are anticipating more guerilla marketing. It's harder to police and the legal influence over this kind of area is more hazy."
At the Beijing Games – where internet restrictions were also in place locally – there were around 100 million users of social media worldwide, but the organisers had no social media presence. For London 2012 there will be more than 2 billion, and the IOC, to its credit, is making heroic efforts at engagement.
"We are at a dawn of a new age of sharing and connecting," says Alex Huot, the IOC's Swiss-based head of social media, "and London 2012 will ignite the first conversational Olympic Games."
Can Games organisers police social media chatter? Twitter has already agreed to work with Locog in barring non-sponsors from buying promoted ads with hashtags like #London2012.
The organising committee has also put together a detailed social media and blogging policy for athletes, so that they don't accidentally fall foul of regulations - by Tweeting about a brand that isn't an Olympic sponsor, for example. (During "Games Period" - 18 July to 15 August - advertising rules become much stricter for athletes, banning all non-sponsor endorsements.) Like all attendees at any Olympic venue, there is an absolute bar on athletes uploading snatches of video or audio, which would contravene lucrative broadcasters' rights.
But will Locog really disqualify Usain Bolt if he Tweets about drinking Pepsi? (Coca Cola is the main softdrink sponsor.)
It's inconceivable, says Jordan. "As with many rules and regulations, some of the sanctions are very draconian, and rarely used. I do not believe there would be any great appetite for evoking any of these incredibly tough sanctions, and high-profile disqualifications of athletes — that's the last thing they would want."
"We don't police," says Huot, "but we are working closely with all the platforms to make sure that trademark and IP rights are respected and that we have a mechanism in place in case of infringements." He acknowledges, however, that moderating is a technical challenge.
Organisers have asked athletes to report any ambush activities on a dedicated website, OlympicGamesMonitoring.com. It is not accessible to unauthorised persons.
Locog stresses its approach will be "pragmatic" and "amicable" where possible, but even for ordinary ticket holders, the regulations are draconian if it chooses to assert them.
"On a very literal reading of the terms and conditions, there's certainly an argument that the IOC could run that you wouldn't be able to post pictures to Facebook," says Jordan. "I think what they are trying to avoid is any formal commercial exploitation of those images, but that's not what it says. And for that reason, it would appear that if you or I attended an event, we could only share our photos with our aunties around the kitchen table. Which seems a bizarre consequence."
Pressed for clarification on this point, Locog would only repeat its policy that images "can only be used for private purposes".
In such a controlled environment, says Brownsell, there will always be a danger for marketers that association with an event that is seen as overly commercialised or legalistic may be perceived as a drawback. He cites the example of Visa, which experienced some negative press when it was the only payment option offered when tickets were offered for sale.
Ultimately, however, there is a good reason for the restrictions, Brownsell stresses – as a shortfall in sponsorship would have to be made up from the public purse.
"Maybe Locog hasn't put across strongly enough the argument that these companies are paying for the Olympics, and if they weren't paying for it, we would be paying for it."

Banned during the Games: What the rules say
Athletes don't …
• Blog about your breakfast cereal or energy bar if it's not an official sponsor – in Games Period all endorsement is banned.
• Post video clips from inside the athletes' village to your blog or Youtube. No audio or video content from inside any Olympic venue can be uploaded to any site.
• Tweet "in the role of a journalist". Athletes "must not report on competition or comment on the activities of other participants".

Non-sponsor companies and businesses don't …
• Say: "Supporting our athletes at the 2012 Games!" or "Help us make it a Gold 2012!"
• Use images that suggest an assocation with the London Olympics.
•Offer tickets as part of a promotion.

Crowd members don't …
• Upload a clip of William and Kate tripping up the steps of the Olympic stadium to Youtube: "A Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet."
• Post your pictures to Facebook – this may fall under the same restriction.
• Take part in an ambush marketing stunt, "including, for the avoidance of doubt individual or group ambush marketing".

-Esther Addley

Source: www.guardian.co.uk