London 2012 Olympics

Welcome to this week's round up of what's been going on at London 2012.

With today marking just six months to go until the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the Olympic Delivery Authority has handed over the Olympic and Paralympic Village to the London 2012 Organising Committee.

In my latest audio blog I talk about the positive impact that the Paralympic Games can have in helping to change attitudes towards disabled people.

Listen to the blog

View the transcript

Six months from today, the eyes of the world will be on London with the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. With excitement building around the globe, I feel this day marks a good opportunity to look at the enormous scale of the project.

I often talk about the Games being a massive logistical exercise, the largest in peacetime. This is evident when considering the range of people whose needs we have to satisfy between now and the end of the Games.

Heart of our Games

First, the athletes – the people at the heart of our Games. There will be over 10,000 Olympic athletes and over 4,000 Paralympic athletes competing at London 2012. To put this into perspective, less than 1,000 athletes compete at the FIFA World Cup. Furthermore, our Olympians come from over 200 nations, more than are represented at the UN.

Next we come to our spectators. Eight million tickets will be sold for the Olympic Games: this is the same number as Athens 2004, Euro 2012 and the 2010 FIFA World Cup combined. A further two million tickets will be sold for the Paralympic Games. We are currently working hard to finalise the ticket designs, official souvenir programmes and many more licensed products.

And then there's the media: across print and broadcast there are over 22,000 people covering the Games. In fact, when you include the technical teams across broadcast, there are around 28,000 accredited media attending. We need to house, feed and provide facilities for them, which is a massive job in itself – and that’s before the actual sport begins!

Extraordinary summer

Then there are the people all over the UK, tens of millions of people joining in with the Games. Whether it’s through the 1,000 Inspire programmes; as part of the Get Set education programme; taking part in the London 2012 Festival; or signing up as a Local Leader; there are great opportunities for everyone to get involved with what is set to be an extraordinary summer.

Elsewhere, our Torch team is busy meticulously plotting for the Torch Relay routes, planning Torchbearer spots and discussing every evening and lunch time celebration – including the Paralympic Torch Relay Flame Festivals – with local authorities.

And finally, the people watching at home around the world. The estimated television viewership will be bigger than the Royal Wedding, with over four billion viewers worldwide. Our Games-time website is likely to record more traffic than any other site in the world and will have more visitors than there are internet users in the USA, Canada and Mexico.

Everything we do is focused on creating the best possible Games-time experience for all of these groups of people. It's quite a responsibility – but at the same time an extraordinary opportunity.

Today we launched London 2012 World Sport Day to the world with a photo shoot at the Copper Box.

One of the finest all-round athletes in history, Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands remains the first and only woman to win four Athletics gold medals at a single Olympic Games.

In a remarkable career which lasted 20 years, Blankers-Koen won multiple European titles and set 20 world records, but her finest hour would come at the London 1948 Games

'The Flying Housewife'

Twelve years earlier, Blankers-Koen competed in the High Jump and 4 x 100m Relay at Berlin 1936 but missed out on the medals.

Despite losing her best years to World War Two, Blankers-Koen – a 30-year-old mother of two nicknamed ‘The Flying Housewife’ – was determined to prove the critics who felt she was too old wrong.

At London 1948, she did just this. In her first event, the 100m, Blankers-Koen won the Netherlands’ first ever Olympic Athletics gold medal, and promptly followed this up by taking the victory in the 80m Hurdles following a photo finish.

World-class performances

Blankers-Koen then obliterated the field in the 200m, winning the race by a margin of 0.7 seconds – this still stands today as the largest margin of victory in a 200m final. This was soon followed up with a fourth and final gold in the 4 x 100m Relay.
 
Her haul of four golds at a single Games – a feat only matched by Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis – meant Blankers-Koen returned to the Netherlands a hero. For her sporting feats, a statue was erected in her honour, while she was presented with a bicycle from her neighbours to encourage her to 'go through life at a slower pace'.

Crowned female athlete of the century by the International Association of Athletics Federations, Blankers-Koen continues to be an inspiration to women around the world.

Find out more about Athletics at London 2012

The 11 days of competition during the London 2012 Paralympic Games will see almost 4,200 athletes battle it out across 20 sports. They will be the biggest Paralympic Games ever, and I am hugely excited about what lies ahead.