Close

London 2012 Olympic Park Best For Athletes

While touring Sydney’s Olympic Park, Sebastian Coe, head of London’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, said the Olympic Park planned for the London 2012 Games has been designed to provide athletes with the best possible conditions to set Olympic and world records, and to achieve career best performances.

Coe said the London Olympic Park would house key Olympic venues on the same site, including the Aquatics Centre, the Hockey Centre, Velodrome, the Olympic Stadium and the Olympic Village, along with some temporary competition venues.

Coe said, “locating key Olympic venues close together on the same site within the Olympic Park will provide great security, accommodation and transportation benefits for the athletes and the national Olympic team officials”.

Coe added that London planned a similar but modified Olympic park as Sydney’s Olympic Park, which would include an Olympic Village within the Olympic Park, close to key competition venues also inside the park, enabling more than 50 per cent of Olympic athletes and 95 per cent of Paralympic athletes to live and compete in the park, to be located in east London, seven minutes from central London.

The co-location of venues within Sydney Olympic Park was widely regarded as a centrepiece of the highly successful staging of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and is rapidly becoming the preferred model for hosting major multi-sport events such as the Olympic Games.

Coe said London’s Olympic Park would include a new Olympic stadium that would be designed around the needs of the athletes.

According to a London 2012 media release, the London Olympic Park would also be the catalyst for regenerating poor inner east London neighbourhoods around which the park would be located, creating thousands of new jobs, affordable homes and business opportunities in addition to the biggest new community park in Europe in 150 years.

Coe said that London had also learned the value of starting early from Sydney. Following extensive community consultation, planning approval for the London Olympic Park has already been secured along with guaranteed funding for the park while design and site preparation work has already begun for construction of the Aquatics Centre and Velopark.

Meanwhile, the second phase of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is 75 per cent complete and on track to open in 2007, well ahead of the 2012 Games. The high-speed line will carry athletes and sports fans to the Olympic site near Stratford from King’s Cross.

scroll to top