Recession and the Olympics
Children get creative with 2012 legacy
Olympic football qualifying plan 'daft'
1908 Summer Olympics
1944 Summer Olympics
1948 Summer Olympics
London 1948 to London 2012: Rags to riches
See also
Tessa
Jowell:
Britain would not have bid for 2012 Olympics if we knew about recession
Alistair Osborne and James Kirkup 12 Nov 2008
Britain would not have bid for 2012 Olympics if we knew about recession
Alistair Osborne and James Kirkup 12 Nov 2008
Britain would not have bid to host the 2012 Olympics if the Government had known that a recession was approaching, the minister in charge of the London games has admitted.
The Budget for the 2012 Games has almost tripled but organisers are now under mounting pressure to cut costs as the slowdown squeezes the Government's finances and puts pressure on private contractors.
When London won the Games in 2005, the budget was projected at £2.4 billion but increased to £9.35 billion last year. Central government will pay £6 billion, with £2 billion from Lottery funds and the remainder from London council tax payers.
"Had we known what we know now, would we have bid for the Olympics? Almost certainly not," Miss Jowell said at the event on Tuesday night.
British officials have already tacitly conceded that London will not be able to compete with this summer's dramatic Beijing games, which are said to have cost more than £20 billion.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has said that instead of spectacle and extravagance, the London games will be marked by "British ingenuity, wit and resourcefulness."
Mr Johnson has promised that the 2012 games will come in under budget, and a range of cost-cutting measures are already under way, leading to claims that London will host the "austerity games."
London's Olympic Board last month discussed plans to downsize the Olympic village after the financial crisis undermined plans to privately fund the £1bn complex. As a result, organisers may be forced to break the promise that athletes would not sleep more than two to a room. Some athletes may now be housed three per room.
Temporary venues to host shooting, equestrian events and basketball have also been considered.
Miss Jowell insisted the Government was bearing down on Olympic costs. "We have taken £1.5 billion of costs out of the project since we started," she said.
Although China's fast-growing economy was able to absorb the cost of the Beijing games, other host nations have not coped so well.
Greece, which staged the 2004 games, eventually paid $13.9 billion, putting the Greek government's finances under severe strain. The government was forced to make cuts in public spending and faced criticism from voters and the European Commission over the cost of the project.
Since Britain now has no choice but to press ahead with staging the Games, ministers will try to present the huge expenditure involved as part of Gordon Brown's bid to spend his way out of the recession.
Ms Jowell said the Olympic spending should be seen as "counter-cyclical investment" to support a slowing economy.
British companies are benefiting from construction work on the Olympic Park in east London, she said.
"Ninety-eight per cent are UK companies, over two-thirds are small and medium companies and over half are outside London," she said.
They included suppliers of steel from Wigan and seating from Huddersfield, Ms Jowell said.
She added that cities around the UK would also benefit from international teams using their training facilities. She said the Thai team planned to train in Manchester, while the American track and field team were close to opting to train in Birmingham.
"So there are opportunities right round the country. It's unimaginable that this would be happening without the Olympics," she said.
She added that there would also be a big benefit to tourism. "The estimate for London is that tourism will receive a £2bn boost," she said.
Following Barcelona's 1992 Olympics the city moved from 16th to 3rd in the most popular short-break destinations, she said.
Hugh Robertson, the Conservative shadow Olympic minister, said the Government's financial management of the games, not the economic slowdown, was the real issue.
He said: "If the original Olympic budget had been correctly calculated, this would be much less of an issue. It is the fact that the government miscalculated the budget by a factor of three that has caused so many difficulties in a recession - or, indeed, at any time."
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Children from the Olympic boroughs have been helping to develop legacy plans for the 2012 site during half term activities organised by the London Development Agency (LDA).
The 4 – 12 year-olds learned about how their area would will be transformed after the 2012 Games and were asked to share ideas about what they would like to see created.
The children came up with a fantastic array of ideas from a wildlife park, rollercoaster ride to a circus, and even a submarine as well as a floating café and underwater viewing stations.
The week long events, which are being put on in partnership with Discover and Westfield, took place as part of a Young Consultants Programme feeding into the legacy design work in a children friendly environment at the Discover Centre in Stratford.
The children also had a chance to meet LDA masterplanners EDAW, Allies and Morisson and KCAP who are leading work on the Legacy Masterplan Framework (LMF) – a spatial plan for homes, parkland, schools, workspace, health and sporting facilities to be developed on the Olympic site after the 2012 Games.
The week long activities included:
• Creative drawing to reflect on their ideal park – making collages of their images and sticking them onto the masterplan. These were gathered in a giant book of the collages which were presented to the masterplanners
• Meeting with masterplanners, ask questions and learn more about the proposed plans for the Olympic legacy.
• Visiting Victoria Park in east London looking at canals and parkland
• Visiting Canary Wharf to see how a public square works in a corporate environment.
LDA Group Director of Olympic Legacy, Tom Russell, said:
"It was great to see the children responding to the Olympic legacy project. They were full of ideas about what should be developed after the 2012 Games. This part of London will be developed around them so it is crucial that they have some idea about what is happening now so feel like they have a stake in the future"
"We want to include as many people as possible in our legacy masterplanning consultation. On top of the school visits we are appointing a youth panel where 14-19 year olds are being involved in the planning process and helping to generate interest among other youngsters"
The LMF outline planning application, due to be submitted next year, will be part of a wider economic, social and physical regeneration strategy for the Olympic Park and the Lower Lea Valley. The LDA is leading this work alongside London 2012 partners.
For media enquiries, please contact Sarita Bhatia at the LDA Media Team on 020 7593 8087; for public enquiries, please call 020 7593 9000; for out of hours media enquiries, please call 07977 439 371.
Notes to editors
• The London Development Agency works to improve quality of life for all Londoners and drive sustainable economic growth.
• The LDA is helping delivery of Olympic legacy now. This work includes helping Londoners access skills, job and businesses opportunities through projects such as the Opportunities Fund, Personal Best and CompeteFor. The LDA has also developed three state of the art business parks in Beckton, Leyton and Enfield for businesses relocating from the Olympic Park site. For more information about the LDA’s Olympic legacy work visit www.legacynow.co.uk
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• Masterplanners for the LMF process are EDAW, Allies and Morrison and KCAP.
• Discover is the UK’s first hands-on centre focusing on creativity through projects, exhibits and activities exploring imagination, words, language and the built environment. Each year over 55,000 children and adults participate in programmes. Discover provides their first opportunity to work with professional artists.
• The LDA is leading the master planning process, working with partners the Olympic Delivery Authority, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), the Greater London Authority, Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Communities and Local Government (DCLG), the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC), the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) and the five host boroughs of Hackney, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest.
• On July 2 the LDA took control of the Olympic Park site - an area equivalent to Hyde Park - following the acquisition of 2,200 land and property interests. The LDA has supported 193 businesses to move. Almost all have relocated to new premises securing 98% of the 4,750 jobs on site. The Agency has also supported 425 residents, 35 Traveller families and 64 allotment holders to find new homes and premises nearby.
• The LDA is committed to delivering an Olympic legacy now. This includes helping Londoners access training, job, sporting and business opportunities through projects such as London Summer of Sport, Personal Best and CompeteFor. The LDA is also planning what will go on the Olympic site after the Games.
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David Cameron's weekend suggestion that the Home Nations should stage a four-team tournament to decide who represents Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics in London was rejected last night as an unhelpful and unwelcome contribution to the controversial debate on the issue.
The Scottish Football association and its counterparts in Wales and Northern remain implacably opposed to the fielding of a British team, believing it would be the start of the end of the home nations' special – and separate – identities within Fifa and world football.
The Tory leader said on the Scottish edition of BBC TV's The Politics Show on Sunday that a tournament to select one of the four nations to represent Britain would offer a solution. "For the Olympics, there is this need to have the one national team," he said. "Maybe the answer is to have a home tournament, see who wins, and that team goes forward – maybe that's one idea. We have got to settle this so there is a representative team."
The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has made it clear he would like a combined British team to play, as has the British Olympic Association's chief executive, Simon Clegg, and the London organising committee chairman, Lord Coe.
A BOA spokesman said: "It is for the BOA, as the national Olympic committee, to select the teams at each Olympic Games and to decide which sports to enter. The BOA hopes that a way can be found to allow the four home nations Football Associations to agree to let their players put themselves forward for selection to both the men's and women's squads. The BOA will continue to discuss this issue further with IOC and Fifa officials."
The English FA is not opposed to a British team. It is almost certain that high-level political pressure will ensure a British team plays, even if it is comprised solely of English players, as at the 1908 and 1912 Games.
A Scottish FA spokesman said last night: "We remain completely opposed to the concept of a British team at the Olympics." The Wales and Northern Ireland FAs share that view, believing a British team will threaten the individual statuses of the home nations.
Even if the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish changed their minds on the principle – unlikely – they argue that there is no room in the calendar for a decisive tournament as suggested by Cameron.
The private view of more than one Scottish FA official is that "the politicians should bugger off out of it". The Independent also understands that Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, on a visit to Scotland earlier this year, told the Scottish FA he agreed with its stance.
Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, said: "I'm not sure David Cameron is fully in command of the subject. The idea that in any sense or semblance we should risk the future of Scottish international football for the sake of participation in an under-21 tournament, the Olympics, I think is simply daft."
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The 1908 Summer Olympics (the
Games of the IV Olympiad) were the fourth
modern Olympic Games and the third to be hosted outside of Athens,
Greece. The International Olympic Committee considers them the fourth
Olympic Games, discounting the intercalated 1906 Summer Olympics.The 1908 Olympic Games were scheduled to take place in Rome, but the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on 7 April 1906 required the Italian Government to redirect funds away from the Olympics. The events took place between 27 April 1908 and 31 October 1908, with 22 nations participating in 110 events. The British team easily topped the unofficial medal count, finishing with three times as many medals as the second-place United States.
The 1908 Olympic Games were originally scheduled to be hosted by Rome, but the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius caused the Games to be relocated to London.
These Games were much better organized than the previous regularly scheduled Olympic Games (they were even the first to have an opening ceremony), yet they were marred by politics and nationalism. Britain's recent refusal to give Ireland its independence caused Irish athletes to boycott the Games and caused contestants from the U.S to not dip the American flag to the British royalty during the opening ceremony (a tradition the U.S. continues to this day).
There was also controversy over the 400-meter final heat. As four runners came into the final stretch, W.C. Robbins (U.S.) was first, followed by J.C. Carpenter (U.S.), with British Wyndham Halswelle coming in third, and followed by a fourth runner from the U.S. As Carpenter and Halswelle (second and third runners) swung out to pass Robbins, someone shouted "Foul!" Though Carpenter (the U.S. runner who had been in second) finished first, with Robbins (U.S.) in second, and Halswelle (U.K.) in third, the British officials accused Carpenter of blocking and elbowing Halswelle and voided the whole race. The race was ordered to be rerun, but since the American runners refused to redo the race, Halswelle ran the race all by himself to win the gold.
It was in the 1908 Olympic Games that the exact distance of a marathon was established as 26 miles and 365 yards. Diving was added to the events for this year.
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The 1944 Summer Olympics (Games of the XIII Olympiad) were scheduled to be held in London. Awarded in 1939, they were, however, cancelled due to World War II. These Games would have celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Modern Olympiad. A small celebratory sporting competition was held in Lausanne, in lieu of the Olympics, at IOC HQ.
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The 1948 Summer Olympics (the
Games of the XIV Olympiad) were the first
to be held after World War II, with the 1944 Summer Olympics having
been cancelled due to the war. Showing a collective unity after the
war, 59 nations competed in 136 different events between 29 July 1948
and 14 August 1948. Germany and Japan had not been invited due to
security reasons. Unlike the last time the UK hosted the Olympics, the
British athletes did not have a high medal count, finishing 12th in the
unofficial medal count with only 23 medals.Though World War II was over, Europe was still ravaged from the war. When it was announced that the Olympic Games would be resumed, many debated whether it was wise to have a festival when many European countries were in ruins and the people near starvation. To limit the United Kingdom's responsibility to feed all the athletes, it was agreed that the participants would bring their own food. Surplus food was donated to British hospitals.
No new facilities were built for these Games, but the Wembley Stadium had survived the war and proved adequate. No Olympic Village was erected; the male athletes were housed at an army camp in Uxbridge and the women housed at Southlands College in dormitories.
Germany and Japan, the aggressors of World War II, were not invited to participate.
There was one major snafu at the Games. Though the United States had won the 400-meter relay by a full eighteen feet, a judge ruled that one of the U.S. team members had passed the baton outside of the passing zone. Thus, the U.S. team was disqualified. The medals were handed out, the national anthems were played. The United States officially protested the ruling and after careful review of the films and photographs taken of the baton pass, the judges decided that the pass had been completely legal; thus the United States team was the real winner. The British team had to give up their gold medals and received silver medals (which had been given up by the Italian team). The Italian team then received the bronze medals which had been given up by the Hungarian team.
Though there had been much debate as to whether or not to hold the 1948 Olympic Games, the Games turned out to be very popular and a great success. Approximately 4,000 athletes participated, representing 59 countries.
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London
1948 to London 2012:
Rags to riches for the 'high-class Del Boy' who dreamt of gold, not money
The Austerity Games rescued the Olympics and were a fairer reflection of the ideal than today's financial frenzy.
By Alan Hubbard 17 February 2008
Rags to riches for the 'high-class Del Boy' who dreamt of gold, not money
The Austerity Games rescued the Olympics and were a fairer reflection of the ideal than today's financial frenzy.
By Alan Hubbard 17 February 2008
Bill Nankeville growled: "Drugs? We'd never heard of them. All we ever got was a spoonful of glucose and maybe a shot of sherry and eggs if you weren't feeling too clever. It was all very different then."
Indeed it was. Sixty years ago, Nankeville was one of the biggest names in British athletics, a champion miler who took part in the last Olympic Games to be held in London, in 1948, finishing sixth in the 1500 metres.
He shakes his head sadly. "When they talk about the Olympics still being about taking part rather than winning, it's a load of bullshit. Everyone wants to win an Olympics so they can be a millionaire. That's why so many of them take drugs. But there should be no compromise. If they are prepared to dope themselves then they should also be prepared to be banned for life if they get caught."
Nankeville, who is the father of the entertainer Bobby Davro, the comic impressionist now starring in EastEnders, will be a spry 83 next month, one of the few-dozen surviving members of that 375-strong Olympic team. Most are in their eighties or nineties. At his golf club, Ashford Manor, situated near his home in Staines, Middlesex, he recalled the post-war Austerity Games, when food and clothing were still rationed.
The British team for Beijing will prepare in a five-star resort in Macau, off the Chinese mainland, at a cost of £1 million. The men in the Class of '48 were housed in RAF Nissen huts at Uxbridge, while the women were dispersed throughout various schools and convents. A temporary cinder running track was laid at the old 83,000-capacity Wembley Stadium, and swimming events were held in a portable metal tank.
"Mind you, the grub was quite good," Nankeville says. "It was supplemented by food parcels from Canada. My wife's cousin had a butcher's shop,and as there was no weighing machine I used to go down there and weigh myself by hanging like a carcass. Then he slipped me a nice bit of steak for my breakfast. A different world then."
In so many homes like Nankeville's it was the age of tin baths, outside toilets, a Lilo on the floor and one fire to heat the whole house. A milkman's son from Woking, Surrey, he went to the same school as Alec and Eric Bedser, and says he took up athletics because "I wasn't any good at anything else". He left school at 14, worked at the Vickers-Armstrong aircraft factory and became a founder member of Walton Athletics Club. "In those days we had no idea of training," he says. "Most Saturdays and Sundays we were out drinking and dancing."
It was also the age of gentlemen and players, sport's great social divide. There were the toffs from public schools and universities, and the toilers like Nankeville who, you might say, had been born on the wrong side of the athletics track. The sport was dominated by Oxbridge types, and blazers proliferated. "Yes, there was class distinction, but you didn't seem to worry much about it. It was just wonderful to be able to represent your country, especially for someone like me, coming from where I did. And to get in the Olympic team, well, words can't describe it."
It was not until he was called up by the Army, where he became a physical training instructor, that he began to take the sport really seriously, running in meetings with the likes of the great Emil Zatopek. "A lovely man, kind and generous. He spoke five languages."
Nankeville, who began as a sprinter, won the Amateur Athletics Association mile title four times in five years between 1948 and 1952 and also took part in the '52 Helsinki Olympics beforeretiring two years later. His best recorded time was 4min 8.8sec, set in 1949. With Don Seaman, Roger Bannister and Chris Chataway he ran a world record time of 16min 41sec for the mile relay in August 1953, as well as a world record 15:27.2 for the 4 x 1500m the next month, running with Ralph Dunkley, David Law and Gordon Pirie.
"Tooting Bec track, where we trained most of the time, was like one big dustbin, litter all over the place and kids running around everywhere. We also used Herne Hill, where the showers were rusty and there was only cold water. Our coach, Bill Thomas, who was 75, used to go for a run himself, and he'd get someone to throw a bucket of water over him. He'd say to us, 'If I can do it, you can; now get in those showers'. And I never once caught a cold."
But there were perks in the form of under-the-counter payments. "Everybody at the top in athletics was at it. Not brown envelopes, it was cash in your hand. They all used to take it. I got a hundred quid once when I ran in front of 80,000 people in Glasgow, but there were rigid amateur rules in other areas; for instance, if you were a boxer or professional footballer you couldn't be an athlete too.
"Once I put in my expenses for a 10-shilling lunch. Jack Crump, who ran the sport, said: 'Where have you been eating, the Ritz?' If you ever got money for a radio or TV interview, it always went straight to the Board."
He got a month's leave from the Army for the'48 Games, but admits : "I went into those Games with the wrong attitude. I never thought I could win the Olympics, although I think I did lead for a time. It was a cinder track and it had been raining – I always seemed to be running in the rain in those days. I was also terribly nervous, always was, that was my trouble.
"Sydney Wooderson, one of our greatest-ever runners, should have lit the flame, but at the last minute they picked some university bloke. I thought thatwas terrible. I don't want it to seem that I have a chip on my shoulder, but it was so much about class then.
"And my view is that the Olympics should always be where they began – in Athens. They should build a permanent Olympic city there, and at least it would stop all this junketing all over the place, with cities bidding for the Games. Of course I am pleased they'll be in London in 2012, but £9 billion? Think of what that could do to improve sporting facilities all over the country, not just in London.
"I still don't understand why London had to fight to get the Games anyway. In the two previous Games held here, in 1908 and 1948, we stepped in to save the Olympics when other cities dropped out. The IOC should have said to us, 'You did us a favour, now we'll do you one.'
"And another thing that bugs me is why are they having to build a new stadium? Why couldn'tthey have used Wembley, like they did in 1948? What good is that stadium going to be for the youth of the country afterwards?"
Nankeville met his wife, Janet, in 1947 and they have been married for 60 years. After leaving the Army in 1948, he worked first as a nurseryman then as a sports- goods salesman for Lillywhites: "I've always been a natural salesman." After 10 years he opened his own warehouse, then a chain of discount shops. "I've always been ducking and diving – Bobby calls me a high-class Del Boy." But, like his son, still a class act.
The flying housewife cleans up at the XIV olympiad
The XIV Olympic Games in 1948, originally scheduled for London in 1944, cost £600,000 to stage and made a profit of £30,000. A record 59 countries attended, but not Germany, Japan or the Soviet Union. Television coverage made its debut via an estimated 80,000 black-and-white sets.
With 23 medals, Britain came 12th in a medals table headed by the USA and Sweden.
Britain won only three golds, all on the water – Richard Burnell and Bert Bushnell in the double sculls; Ran Laurie and Jack Wilson in the coxless pairs; David Bond and Stewart Morris in the Swallow class sailing.
Among the 14 silver medal winners were Tom Richards (marathon) and cyclist Reg Harris. High-jumper Dorothy Tyler again won silver after finishing second in Berlin 12 years earlier.
The US high jump winner Alice Coachman was the first black woman to win a gold medal in any sport. The star of the Games was the Flying Housewife, Dutch mother-of-two Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won a record four track medals at the age of 30.
Decathlete Bob Mathias became the youngest-ever male Olympic champion, aged 17 years and 263 days.
1948 was the first Olympics to have a political defection. Marie Provaznikova won a gold medal with the Czechoslovakian gymnastics team, then refused to return home, citing "lack of freedom" in the Soviet bloc.
See also
Boris -3 months later
Tessa throws good money after very bad
Olympic boycotts
Western media has 'demonised' China says Chinese Ambassador to the UK
David Taylor warns Team GB could spell end for Scotland
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