London 2012 Continues To Make Positive Progress

The International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Coordination Commission concluded today its fifth full visit (25-26 November) to the city of London. With less than 1,000 days to go to the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, the Commission was able to hear about the advances made by the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) and its partners and share their thoughts and experiences on the planning for the Games. The two-day session focused principally on the operational delivery of the Games, and the Commission received in-depth updates on the progress of its operations.
Very Positive

Commenting after the meeting, IOC Coordination Commission Chairman Denis Oswald said, “Once again, we have had very productive meetings with our partners at London 2012 and we are very positive about the progress that they are making in preparing for the Games.” He continued, “It is over a year since the Beijing Games came to a close and LOCOG has clearly been able to learn from its experiences last year and integrate them into planning for 2012. This was evident from the good discussions and sharing of information that we had around a number of topics including venues, infrastructure, workforce, city preparations and LOCOG’s volunteer programme, which will be launched next year. LOCOG also updated us on the proposals to move badminton and rhythmic gymnastics to Wembley Arena and we are satisfied with progress on this issue. LOCOG is discussing the proposal with the two International Federations concerned and we look forward to hearing LOCOG’s position at our Executive Board meeting in December.”
Operations And Planning

With venue construction continuing on or ahead of schedule and the Games drawing ever nearer, the focus of this Coordination Commission was largely on operations and planning than on the excellent construction and regeneration work being carried out by the Olympic Delivery Authority. With this in mind, the Commission spent time discussing with LOCOG and its partners, including the Government and the Mayor of London’s office, a number of operational subjects including athlete services, ticketing, city operations, technology, press operations, transport, sport and Paralympic Games operations.
LONDON 2012

London was elected as the Host City for the Games of the XXX Olympiad on 6 July 2005 at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore. London eventually succeeded in the fourth round of voting taking 54 votes from a possible 104. London faced stiff opposition during the vote from the other four candidate cities: Paris, New York, Moscow and Madrid. There will be 26 sports on the Olympic programme in London in 2012 and around 10,500 athletes.