I have gotten a Olympic bus and collecting the McDonalds cups but waiting for it all to go on sale so i can get heaps of stuff!

Nine Network already nabbed Australian supermarket chain Coles as the first prinicpal sponsor for its London 2012 coverage, reported from Switzerland as Nine picked up two Golden Rings Awards for its Vancouver coverage.

Hours ago, tourist body VisitBritain announced a partnership with NBC to "showcase Britain" that includes, among other things, promos on NBC to encourage Americans to travel to the UK. Precedent with NBC is already there as the network showed tourist commission ads from Spain and Australia leading up to NBC's coverage of the Games in those places.

A man has been found dead at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

The 44-year-old, who was working at the site, was discovered unresponsive by police at 7.30am on Sunday after reports of a person having fallen from the stadium.

Ambulances attended but the man was pronounced dead shortly before 8am. His death is being treated as “unexplained”.

Scotland Yard has not named the man but said he was a sub-contractor working at the venue. Officers believe they know his identity and are trying to trace his next of kin.

Source: Press Association, in The Guardian

A £15 million monument at London’s Olympic park is to be constructed under plans from Boris Johnson, the capital’s mayor, to rival the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The mayor is said to have described the plans as "stunning". The structure would be built at the Stratford, east London site and be funded by Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man. One early design shows a 400ft construction that resembles a cross between a Native American totem pole and a pylon, reports suggested.

The structure, part of a cultural programme planned to celebrate the 2012 Olympics, would be lit at night and powered by solar panels.

It is understood that five shortlisted artists, including the former Turner prize winner Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley, the designer of the Angel of the North, are being considered by a panel to be commissioned for the work.

Despite the mayor previously pledging in his mayoral manifesto to crack down on tall buildings, describing London’s skyline as “precious”, sources say the project would be “stunning”.

A source close to Mr Johnson reportedly said: “He wants to build something quite stunning in its ambition, like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty — a tribute to London that people will fall in love with.”

A friend Mr Mittal, 59, added: “He loves living in London and wants to give something back to the city.

“The Olympics are obviously a very important event and he wants to be able to contribute to a legacy project that people will be able to enjoy for many years to come.”

Critics, however, said the project was likely to be compared with the “wedding cake” that Mussolini completed in Rome or the 250ft gold statue that was commissioned by Saparmurat Niyazov, a former Turkmen dictator, to rotate to face the sun.

Brian Sewell, the art critic, Britain was already “littered with public art of absolutely no merit”.

“We are entering a new period of fascist gigantism. These are monuments to egos and you couldn't find a more monumental ego than Boris.”

A spokesman for Mr Johnson told the Sunday Times: “The mayor is keen to see stunning, ambitious, world-class art in the Olympic Park and has been working with the Olympic Delivery Authority over many months to explore a series of commissioning projects.

“He is also in touch with prominent figures in the art establishment and philanthropists about taking these forward and getting private backing.

“This work is at an early stage and details will be announced when the projects are confirmed.”

The winning sculpture is likely to be announced within the next fortnight

I traveld Back to london for the first time since 2012,

and visited the queen elizabeth Olympic park to see if the magic that was London 2012 is still there.

, taking in to acount that its is now winter, so the greenery isent what it was during 2012, much has been done to expand the green areas, though time will tell if the quality of the grass will be as it was in 2012. I was a bit concerned about some of the path ways that seemed to have detriated but work is still being done, so Im not sure if this will become a long term problem. The landcape tree planting is to a very high standard as are the sculptural seeting fixtures,

and the Orbit is as wonderfully beguiling as ever rearing over the park like a war of the worlds martion,The velatrom has a sign on the door saying wer'r oepn and you can come in,

which I did. Any one can sit and watch the cyclists practise for free and enjoy what is a profoundly and deeply and intensely pleasant peace of architecture both external and internal, especially for those who couldn’t see the interior during the Olympics I would say the magic of 2012 is definitely alive and kicking here.

The opening ceremony will take place on Wednesday 29th August at 8:30pm.

Over 4,000 athletes from 162 nations will take part in various sports until Sunday 9th August when the closing ceremony signal the end of the games.

With tickets already close to being sold out, many are predicting that these games will be without a doubt, the greatest Paralympic Games of all time.

Earlier this year, I was selected to be a Games Maker at the Paralympics, so I will be working at the Paralympic Village bringing you all the gossip of who is doing who. _^Maybe...

First piece of music for London 2012? The Official Torch Relay song:

Dionne Bromfield & Tinchy Stryder - Spinnin for 2012

Was posted to YouTube Aug 31, but the description says it won't be released until Sept 25th.

Who is daveypodmore?

Born in a small town in Staffordshire in the seventies to the people that would turn out to be his parents. Daveypodmore hit the ground running. Crayons were his medium of choice and after decorating his living room for his mum, he moved onto a larger work in the hall stairs and landing. A piece he called 'Alien Attack' but his mum called "What the f**k!' and "Take them bleeding crayons off him before I kill him'. This initial bad reaction from the critics only motivated him do do bigger and better works. The most important of these 'Happy' can still be seen at his grandparents as no matter how many coats of paint his grandad applied, this stunning work still seeps through, much to the unhappiness of its current owners, Mr & Mrs Jones who chose not to comment on the piece as it was "with their lawyers".

At first school his talent was spotted early when he moved to paints. Using Brian Andrews as a moving canvas daveypodmore bought his work to a new audience. Most noticeably Mrs Andrews who said of the artwork "How am I gonna get that out?" Daveypodmore leant early he would have to suffer for his art, with no tea and no playing out for a week it was worth it while, as in solitude in his room he planned his most ambitious project. 'Painting the town red', a work that brought a tear to the eye of many of the residents of Eastwood Avenue. Daveypodmore and his family left shortly afterwards, under cover of darkness with no goodbyes.

At art college somewhere in the midlands daveypodmore experimented with Graphic Design as his chosen field, as none of the other courses would touch him with a barge pole and his mum told him she wouldn't be responsible for her actions if he didn't get his lazy arse out of bed. It was while at this college that daveypodmore had the sudden realisation he was allowed to use crayons, paints, computers. And as he felt the world needed to be 'coloured in a bit', he thought he was the man for the job. Years later he was gobsmacked to discover he even gets paid to do it too.

Daveypodmore's current project is to bring the London 2012 branding to life in a way that the people at London 2012 hadn't quite done yet. And so the 'Gamesbids Signature Series' was started. An on going work that will end in 2012 and the opening of London's games and a well deserved holiday for daveypodmore, although not in Staffordshire as he has been asked not to go back.

We hope you enjoy the collection of works of Stamfords second best Gaphic Designer.

1: To celebrate the Beijing handover

2: To show the decade of British sport ahead

3: To mark the 3 years to go for the London games

4: For the 1000 day countdown

5: To mark BMW becoming an Olympic partner

6: A taster as to a London 2012 supergroup for the opening ceremony

7: For the opening of the Vancouver games

8: To mark the end of the Vancouver games

9: To mark the death of the man that helped create punk

10: A full English breakfast gets a 2012 make over

11: To mark the launch of the London mascots

"A long haul for uncertain reward" - British Ministers were advised against bidding for 2012 Olympics by civil servants

Top civil servants advised British Ministers against launching a bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, insidethegames can reveal.

Restricted documents dating from October 2002 - seven months before the Government finally gave the green light to the ultimately successful London 2012 bid - repeatedly counsel Ministers in the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) not to bid, warning that the chances of success "may be less than 25 per cent".

The documents, seen by insidethegames, also suggest how any such decision might be handled, advocating a "core message" to the effect that there were "serious weaknesses in delivery in sport in this country" and this was "not the right time to embark on what is a risky project".

In the event, London not only won the toughest bidding battle in the history of the modern Games, but went on to stage an event which, while far outstripping original cost estimates, won universal praise for its upbeat atmosphere, fine facilities and technical proficiency.

The documents, marked "restricted policy", consist of a submission, entitled "Government support for a London bid for the 2012 Olympics", by the then head of the sport and recreation division and a covering letter from Sue Street, then permanent Secretary.

The submission, dated October 15 2002, begins with a short, two-sentence recommendation, moving on to consider six "key issues", before concluding with some paragraphs on handling.

The recommendation, in full, reads as follows: "Any decision to support a bid would have major resource implications across Government and great reputational risk, while a decision not to support is likely to create controversy.

"I therefore recommend that you write to the Prime Minister and to Cabinet Colleagues setting out the considerations discussed below and recommending to them that the Government should not support a bid for 2012."

The bulk of the second sentence is underlined.

On the likelihood of any bid succeeding, the submission argues that, while the Games "may well" come to Europe in 2012, "there is likely to be stiff competition from Rome, Berlin and especially Paris".

London, it says, "can produce a bid of good technical quality (though see below on transport), but the decision turns very much on Britain's standing in world sport. This is not good at present".

British sport, it goes on, "tends to use places on world governing bodies as a reward for long service.

"Our representatives tend not to be well regarded and do not have much influence.

"For different reasons, our IOC members have limited influence in that body.

"As noted above, an accurate assessment is difficult: the BOA is more optimistic, but overall the probability of a successful [sic] may be less than 25 per cent."

In fact, neither Berlin nor Rome bid, though eight other cities - Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris and Rio de Janeiro - joined London on the starting-line.

Paris and Madrid turned out to be the UK capital's strongest rivals, with London deemed by most to be behind its French counterpart right up until the final presentations in Singapore in July 2005.

A lengthy section on sports policy considerations concludes likewise that "this is not the right time for British sport to be bidding", while reservations are also expressed regarding the complexity of London Government.

It would, the document states, "be considerably more difficult for London to get its act together in areas such as volunteer participation and civic pride issues in the way that Manchester [the 2002 Commonwealth Games host] did, or that London's European rivals might be able to".

Difficult to organise it may have been, but the job done by London 2012's army of volunteers, or Games-makers, was one of the unmitigated triumphs of the Games.

On regeneration, the submission warns that a bid would "lead to planning blight until 2005", while on transport - widely recognised from the outset as a prime concern - "any transport solution appears to entail a high degree of risk".

The submission's conclusion, endorsed specifically by the DCMS permanent Secretary in her covering letter, is that "the Olympics will be a long haul for uncertain reward.

"Overall the cost and risks attaching to the project point to a decision not to bid for an Olympics in 2012."

On handling, the document notes that "any decision will be controversial.

"Backing for a bid would be criticised as a waste of money by those less sympathetic to sport or the event itself.

"This could be handled but would be a continuing irritant.

"A decision not to support a bid presents a greater challenge.

"Criticism would be more coherent, orchestrated by the BOA and possibly the GLA, both of whom are adept at media handling.

"The Government would be criticised for lack of commitment to sport, lack of confidence in London/Britain and lack of ambition."

A core message acknowledging that there would be benefits from securing the Games, but arguing that the time is not right is suggested.

"We know there are serious weaknesses in delivery in sport in this country and we are acting in collaboration with the national governing bodies and investing to put it right.

"But this is not the time to embark on an Olympic bid.

"We need to get the fundamentals right.

"We are looking at the mega events strategy for the next 20 years."

While noting that she agrees "entirely" with her colleague's conclusion, Street also writes: "We will draft the letter you might send to the Prime Minister when we know your general reaction.

"I think it would be helpful for you to set out your recommendations clearly.

"But you could also create some space around it by pointing out that a different decision might be arrived at if there was a strong and collective Cabinet view in favour of bidding.

"This would require a clear business case for regeneration pressed by the DPM, the risks on transport to be substantially reduced and (of course) more money."

After repeated delays, Prime Minister Tony Blair's Government finally announced that it would back a London bid on 15 May 2003.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Insidethegames

Symbolic rings around capital to signal Games are on the way

Away from the Stratford building site, there is scant visible evidence around London that in less than 18 months the Olympics will be here.

The few exceptions are the BT Tower's electronic countdown display, a London Transport ticketing poster campaign and the occasional flash of an Olympic logo on a taxi.

But next month the volume will be pumped up with the first of a series of spectaculars.

Giant Olympic rings will be suspended from Tower Bridge and will also eventually adorn the London Eye and St Pancras station, terminus for the Olympic Park "Javelin" shuttle service. London's tallest building, the Shard of Glass, will also be crowned with the rings and there are plans for one of its 72 storeys to light up each time the home nation wins a medal.

On March 15, to mark 500 days to the Games and the start of ticket sales, a giant countdown clock will be installed in Trafalgar Square, courtesy of Olympic timekeeper Omega. And on New Year's Eve a Games-themed firework display will herald the start of Olympic year.

Next spring will see the "dressing" of the capital's main roads, airports and railway stations. Early drafts of the colour scheme were rejected by Mayor Boris Johnson who demanded patriotic red, white and blue instead of what he called "vomit and vermillion".

Public services are being squeezed, but next summer will offer a window on the world like no other. There will be £30million in the Olympic budget to give streets a facelift, while the Mayor has offered each borough £50,000 spruce-up grants.

He also wants Seb Coe's Games organising committee to buck tradition and locate the Olympic cauldron not on the roof of the main stadium but atop the neighbouring Orbit Tower, Anish Kapoor's 115-metre structure.

Meanwhile, consumer champion Which? has attacked as "outrageous and discriminatory" the monopoly deal which dictates that Olympic tickets can only be bought using the official payment card, Visa.

The Office of Fair Trading and the European Commission are looking at the arrangement.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23924578-symbolic-rings-around-capital-to-signal-games-are-on-the-way.do

So, exciting news about landmarks being decorated with giant Olympic rings, Boris has made a decision which will mean the branding will be inconsistent in the street decorations by the sound of it, the news about the Orbit seems to have been proved wrong by the announcement of Heatherwick as the cauldron architect today, and a good thing that VISA's monopoly is being looked into....

Discuss!

http://www.twitvid.com/EHILC

Somethimes, i wonder if we here in the US would sometimes like to have an audio button to mute the commentary with just venue PA like the BBC offers that option.

One year tomorrow was the Opening Ceremony of the London Games - the glowing rings coming together above the stadium, Mr Bean winding up Sir Simon Rattle, the Queen falling unceremoniously out of a helicopter, Paul McCartney missing his cue.... etc etc.

Tonight the Olympic stadium is full once again for the London Anniversary Games - which I didn't manage to get tickets for.

So......time for a little bit of nostalgia....Let's see the photos Gamesbidders took during their visit to the London last summer. To prevent this getting messy, I reckon a max of five photos per post, and it'd be great to have some detail on why the photos you post are your favourites from your time at the Games..

Don't think I need to add anymore...get posting!

Japanese women's football and tennis table team at Narita airport

http://sethonsurvival.com/survival-news/olympics-betting-with-aliens

A 12-week "once-in-a-lifetime" arts festival will form the heart of cultural celebrations surrounding the Olympics with commissions from some of the world's finest artists, according to the new regime now in charge of the UK's Cultural Olympiad.

The event is to be called Festival 2012 and will run from midsummer's day, 21 June, until the last day of the Paralympic Games on 9 September.

The announcement comes seven weeks after a new artistic team took over the running of the Cultural Olympiad – a series of events to showcase the UK's arts and culture to the world – after frequent complaints that it lacked zip, focus and leadership.

The experienced arts manager Ruth Mackenzie is now in charge, answering to a board containing the great and good of the arts world chaired by Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House.

Hall said: "I have been very much of the view that we need to concentrate on a finale to this thing. The festival will be a showcase and it's going to be amazing."

Mackenzie said the festival would aim to define the celebratory mood of the Olympics. She praised the work of the previous two years, but said: "You would expect us to come in and shape, edit, improve and build upon the work. That's our first step and then we commission new material and new ideas and bring our own flavour."

Mackenzie said being only seven weeks into the job they were far from naming commissions. But she said it would be work that was "exceptional and surprising" and "that will amaze us all".

The new artistic team has £75.5m at its disposal, including £15.6m from the national lottery and £3m from the British Council. Announcements on the Festival 2012 programme are expected in October.

Hall and Mackenzie were at pains to say that there were clear lines of accountability, there would not be a repeat of the millennium dome debacle when there was obvious political meddling.

Hall, who was appointed chairman last summer, said: "There will be no political interference. If you look at the people on the board we're not going to be told what to do. Artistic leadership, and this is really important, will be with Ruth."

Mackenzie also stressed she was in charge. "One might imagine that even the politicians have learned from the millennium dome that you need to have clear artistic leadership."

Mackenzie, a former adviser to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and artistic director of the Chichester Festival, has four part-time cultural advisers working alongside her, including the Manchester International Festival's Alex Poots; former Edinburgh international festival director Sir Brian McMaster; former Nottingham Playhouse artistic director Martin Duncan; and the English National Ballet managing director Craig Hassall.

Hassall, who led Sydney's cultural Olympics in 2000, said: "London, I have to say, is particularly organised and I think we're about six months ahead of where we were in Sydney. The building blocks are in place."

He said people would be surprised at the encompassing scale of the games. "It is phenomenal. It is really quite extraordinary how it overtakes the city and the country. The torch relay, the ceremonies, the sporting events, the cultural programme – it's all-consuming," he said.

"I always sound like a scientologist, but if you haven't experienced it you don't know what I'm talking about … but you will."

It was also announced yesterdayon Tuesday that £400,000 is to be given to 10 disabled arts commissions for the Cultural Olympiad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/17/olympics-culture-festival-showcase-arts

Here it is... Team Canada's 2012 thread.

Report news, results etc. here.

In the news today:

Clara Hughes made the team:

CBC via MSN: Cyclists Ryder Hesjedal, Clara Hughes join Olympic team

One gutsy girl. I'll definitely be watching Clara.

http://www.fathomevents.com/?utm_source=USOC&utm_medium=Banner&utm_campaign=FIRST#!first

Prices aren't too bad $11.50 and $12.50 only. Hmmmm...maybe I'll go see it.

Good place to either complain ("no live ceremony!") or praise ("the stunning ceremony intro!") NBC and how they cover these Games. And I suppose this can also act as a "live" chat tomorrow night during the broadcast of the ceremony for those us who won't be able to or don't want to catch a pirated live stream.

As for tonight, Rock Center will be broadcasting from London. Meredith Viera and Bob Costas will preview tomorrow's Opening Ceremony with an interview with the creative director Danny Boyle.