Londoners waking tomorrow with blurred vision and throbbing heads will not have to wait long for their next party, as the city enters its Olympic year and prepares to host the sporting show of a lifetime.
Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee, marking 60 years of her reign, will be celebrated in June followed by England’s appearance at the European soccer championships before the Olympics open on July 27.
Sebastian Coe, the double Olympic 1,500m gold medalist who is now head of London 2012 organizers LOCOG, this week likened the sequence of events to the appearance of Halley’s comet which flashes across the night sky roughly every 75 years.
London will be the only city to have hosted the summer Olympics three times, after 1908 and 1948, and the latest will easily be the biggest sporting event Britain has ever staged.
With a budget of ￡9.3 billion (US$14.31 billion), fears of transport chaos and more British troops assigned to protect the Games than are currently serving in Afghanistan, there are plenty of potential clouds to darken the horizon.
Coe, who said he would wake up on New Year’s Day with the same excitement he had as an Olympic athlete, prefers to see the Games as a chance to show Britain at its best, while also raising spirits both at home and abroad at a time of financial hardship.
“Waking up just 200 days away from the biggest thing this nation will have delivered in living memory is a massive responsibility,” he told the Guardian newspaper.
“And at a time when the world is a pretty difficult place for a lot of people, I think we also know we have a responsibility to try and help lift people’s spirits,” he said.
With just over 200 days to go, Britain is confident its athletes are on track to hit the stated target of winning more medals from more sports in more than a century.
Britain finished fourth in the medals table in Beijing in 2008 with 47 from 11 sports, including 19 golds.
“We have recently reviewed the data for 2011 across all World Championship and other relevant world events and rankings in every Olympic discipline for 2011,” British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Hunt said on Thursday. “This shows Team GB finishing in sixth position with 59 medals across 13 different sports in what would be a relative Olympic medals table.”
However, Hunt was mindful that some major nations do not always send top athletes to championships in the year before a Games and that London promises to be the most competitive Olympics yet.
The building of venues and infrastructure is 90 percent finished with the formal hand-over of the Olympic Park in east London to LOCOG expected early next year.
“In 2012, we will complete our task — finishing the Olympic Village, water polo arena, shooting venue at Woolwich and parklands — as we work alongside the organizing committee to prepare for next summer,” said John Armitt, chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority.
Freddie Freeman homered and drove in four runs, Shohei Ohtani also went deep and Roki Sasaki earned his first major league win as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 10-3 on Saturday night for their seventh straight victory. The Dodgers have won the first two games of the series to improve to 5-0 against Atlanta this year. Los Angeles’ three-game sweep at home early in the season left the Braves 0-7. Sasaki allowed three runs and six hits over five innings. The 23-year-old right-hander gave up a home run to Ozzie Albies, but received plenty of offensive support in his
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
Bayern Munich on Sunday were crowned German champions for the 34th time, giving striker Harry Kane his first major trophy, after second-placed Bayer 04 Leverkusen drew 2-2 at SC Freiburg. Bayern’s 3-3 draw at RB Leipzig on Saturday, when the Bavarians came from two goals down to take the lead before conceding a stoppage-time equalizer, meant defending Bundesliga champions Leverkusen needed to win at Freiburg to delay the title party. Leverkusen were two goals down before scoring twice in the final 10 minutes, but Xabi Alonso’s side could not find a third, as Bayern reclaimed the title at the first attempt after
Shuttler Lin Chun-yi yesterday kept Taiwan on the board as they faced their first major challenge of the group stage after marching into the last eight at the Sudirman Cup Finals in Xiamen, China. Taiwan were losing 3-1 to South Korea as of press time last night, with only the men’s doubles match remaining. Taiwan and four-time champions South Korea have already progressed to the quarter-finals, after Taiwan on Monday blanked the Czech Republic 5-0 without giving up a single game. Before last night’s tie, Taiwan were undefeated in Group B, with a 9-1 match record, ahead of South Korea, who, although also
RSS