Daily Archives: July 29, 2012

Ticketless former medallist watches games from afar

July 29, 2012 4:39 pm by Simon Kuper

At the Rome Games of 1960, the British runner Peter Radford won bronze in the 100m sprint. Radford, now 72, was one of the former British medallists honoured in London’s opening ceremony on Friday night.

Yet while banks of seats have remained empty at many Olympic events on the first weekend of competition, he will not be attending a single event at London 2012. The organisers have not given him a ticket. All he received for participating in the opening ceremony was a free one-day Oystercard to use public transport: while most of the sponsors arrived at the stadium in corporate buses, he came and went on London Underground.

Radford, a former chairman of UK Athletics and now professor of sport at Brunel University, says none of the other British medallists he has spoken to had been given free tickets to the games. “It’s a general policy, as far as I can see,” he says.

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Posted in Athletes, London, Personalities, Politics, Spectators, Sponsorship |

Protesters arrested after anti-Olympic demonstration

July 29, 2012 3:41 pm by Hannah Kuchler

As performers dressed up as Jarrow marchers and suffragettes to play their part in an Olympic opening ceremony which celebrated dissent, present-day protesters were being arrested on the streets of London.

Protesters claimed they were “kettled” – pushed into a cordoned-off area – by police near the Olympic Park on Friday evening as anti-Olympics demonstrators bolstered the ranks of the hundreds of cyclists who took part in the regular “Critical Mass” event.

More than 180 people were arrested for breaching one of the conditions applied to the protest, that it must stay south of the river Thames, by heading towards the stadium at Stratford. Four have been charged, with the remaining 178 released on bail pending further enquiries, the Met police said. Read more

Posted in London, Politics, Security |

Gideon Rachman Diary of a spectator: good transport, bad shopping and no knock-outs

July 29, 2012 11:26 am by Gideon Rachman

Unlike my more privileged colleagues, I do not have a press pass. I have been taking part in the spectator marathon – which had been advertised as a grim and gruelling event.

On Saturday I set myself a tough challenge – get to the Excel centre for the boxing. Unlike the main Olympic Park, which is served by several Underground lines, the Excel can only be reached by the Docklands Light Railway. I have always thought of the DLR as a toy-town system of the sort beloved by urban planners, but useless for actually getting around. In the event, however, we whizzed through Docklands and even got seats on the train.

Spectators are advised to get to events two hours early, to get through heavy security checks. But we actually breezed through in minutes. Even the emergency deployment of the military as security guards appears to have added a dimension to the experience. People were actually posing for photos with the soldiers – which I cannot imagine them doing with the average G4S security guard, whose uniforms are rather less fetching.  Read more

Posted in London, Media, Spectators, Sponsorship, Sport, Transport, Uncategorized, Venues |