Legacy mode

[Gangwon]

UK launches Olympic legacy push for 36 European and World events

UK Sport has announced a campaign to create an Olympic legacy by bringing 36 World and European championships to the United Kingdom.

BBC

Kind of like Russia during their Sochi generation.

2011 ISU World Figure Skating Championships

2013 IAAF World Athletics Championships

2014 Winter Olympics

2015 FINA World Swimming Championships

2016 IIHF World Hockey Championships

2018 FIFA World Cup

[baron-pierreIV]

2013 IAAF World Athletics Championships

But aren't they tearing down and COMPLETELY redoing the Luzniki Stadium?

[Sir Rols]

But aren't they tearing down and COMPLETELY redoing the Luzniki Stadium?

No, going for renovations instead:

Luzhniki Stadium will not be demolished, promises Moscow Mayor

[deawebo]

Still don't get why they wouldn't rebuild Luzhniki, anyways... I hope the redevelopment might be good (ala Berliner Olympiastadion)

It's good how the UK will try to host some events as a legacy mode, even when I think legacy generated by London 2012 might be good anyways...

[zekekelso]

If I were a British taxpayer, I'd wonder why all the legacy ideas seem to involve more government spending.

[Rob2012]

If I were a British taxpayer, I'd wonder why all the legacy ideas seem to involve more government spending.

That seems to me to be a misunderstanding of the scope of the project. This isn't "new" money being spent on legacy - this money was always within the Olympic budget that was set out five or six years ago. The only exception to this is (possibly) the Olympic Stadium, but you might want to ask our idiot Mayor what's going on with that.

If it makes it easier, think of the Olympic Park as a 10 year project with an Olympics two-thirds of the way through. That's certainly how it's been planned. Build the Park up to a point where it can host an Olympics, then stop building, host the Olympics, take down what's not needed anymore, then build the rest. The "rest" being the areas which had to be kept clear for hundreds of thousands of people which can now become more parkland, new cycle and pathways and housing.

What I've said above is actually a bit of an oversimplification. Because, actually, this is much more than a 10 year project as plots, particularly around the edges of the Park, will be sold off one by one for new housing developments which will be built over the next decade or two. In that sense, London 2012 took place in the early stages of this area's overall regeneration.

[Rob2012]

--------------------------------------

One piece of news which I see hasn't been report yet in this thread is this...

BT has chosen to make the Olympic Park broadcast centre in east London the home of its new sports channels.

BBC London correspondent Adrian Warner said the plan was for iCITY, established to transform the park's media centres, to move in.

It would then strike deals with other tenants such as BT Sport, he said.

The London mayor's office confirmed the deal, which is subject to approval by the London Legacy Development Corporation's board on Wednesday.

The telecoms giant has agreed terms for a 10-year lease to be the anchor tenant of the building, which is part of the iCITY enterprise complex for the digital and creative industries.

ICITY was established to transform the press and broadcast centres at the Olympic Park and hopes to create more than 6,500 jobs.

BT said it would refit part of the north end of the centre to house three TV studios, a control centre, 20 edit suites and an audience holding area.

BT Sport will show 38 Barclays Premier League live games a season for three years from August 2013.

It will also show 69 live rugby union games a season from the Aviva Premiership.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20544533

[Alexjc]

I'm absolutly proud and impressed with the London Olympics and QEII Park. Also got to remember that London can still host the Commonwealth Games maybe in the 20s?

This amazing facility will be a tourist attraction for decades to come.

Yes London, you thoroughly deserve my personal stamp of 'Best Olympics in My Lifetime'...so far anyway.

[runningrings]

Yeah a Commonwealth Games held in QEII Olympic Park would be a good fit, in the 2020's. Perhaps London can aim for the 2030 Centennial Commonwealth Games. While I think the Canadians would have a claim to it, London, as the "Athens" of the Commonwealth, would be just about the only other place that could win it away from them.

Perhaps if the CWG are still struggling in 2030 - they could go out with a bang and make it the last. Wrap it up in London.

[The Tower Bridge Fox]

I always new London would win In the battle for 2012, and I think London or the UK could bid again in the not to distant future given the full stadiums at London ,2012, however im sure if the uk does bid again Pairs will jump back in there.
In a seconds contests between London/uk and Paris, especially if the uk bit with a city that isn’t London

I feel It will be harder for the uk to win , even though we would deserve to win again.
We may have to waist until after a Paris games.

As for the legacy we can look forward to the full lee valley vision with fat walks and links between the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park and surrounding parks and waterways all the way from the mouth of the lee to the Hertfordshire country side.

[Scotguy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/disability-sport/20990620

Research raises questions over Paralympic Games legacy

Almost nine in 10 (89%) sports clubs saw no change in the number of people with disabilities joining their ranks in the months after the London Games.

A study of hundreds of clubs throughout the UK by the Sport and Recreation Alliance raises questions over the sporting legacy of the 2012 Paralympics, widely regarded as the most successful ever.

Andy Reed, Chairman of the Alliance, said the findings were "a massive wake-up call not just for government but all of us in the [sport] sector".

[Rob2012]

Tour de France 2014: English route includes London 2012 Olympic Park

The 2014 Tour de France start in Yorkshire will be tougher than usual with a straightforward first stage from Leeds to Harrogate on the opening Saturday followed by a stage from York to Sheffield which the organiser, Christian Prudhomme, compared to the Liege-Bastogne-Liege one day Classic – one of the toughest single-day events on the calendar.

Stage three takes the peloton from Cambridge to central London via Epping Forest and the Olympic Park.

As predicted, there will be no prologue time trial in the 2014 route, with a road-race stage instead, which finishes, by happy coincidence, in the city where Mark Cavendish's mother resides. After passing through the Yorkshire Dales national park, through Kettlewell, Aysgarth, Hawes and Reeth, the first stage will have a relatively flat run-in to the finish through Ripon.

Stage two has a far tougher finale, with six climbs that pepper the final 60km run-in to Sheffield. The race passes through Keighley, Haworth, Hebden Bridge, Elland and Huddersfield before Holmfirth. Further details are set to be announced on Thursday afternoon, but that points to the inclusion of the iconic climb of Holme Moss, a fixture in the Leeds Classic World Cup race in the 1990s.

The riders then transfer to Cambridge for the start of stage three, passing through Epping Forest and the Olympic Park before a finish in central London which is understood to be on the Mall, replicating that of the Olympic road race last August.

This will be the fourth time the Tour has visited Great Britain, with the hugely successful London start in 2007 preceded by Le Tour en Angleterre in 1994, when the race ran stages from Dover to Brighton and around Portsmouth. The Tour's first trip over the Channel was in 1974 for a circuit race in Plymouth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jan/17/tour-de-france-2014-olympic-park

[Rob2012]

Olympic site reborn: pleasure gardens, outdoor cinema and bike trails, the greatest new urban park for a century

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/olympic-site-reborn-pleasure-gardens-outdoor-cinema-and-bike-trails-the-greatest-new-urban-park-for-a-century-8459004.html



The flag-waving crowds are long gone and the Olympic Park is under snow, but work is well under way to transform it into the largest new urban park for a century. The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, as it has now become, is to include a "21st century pleasure garden" with wide tree-lined avenue and a series of "outdoor rooms" with lawns designed to pick up afternoon sun, play areas and even space for a carousel.

The northern end of the park will be a wilder area, with a greater focus on wildlife as well as being a good place for a family day out, according to the London Legacy Development Corporation which is redeveloping and managing the site. More than 4,000 trees, 127,000 shrubs and more than a million herbaceous plants will be planted across the park.

Work has already started on the northern parts of the park, which will also incorporate a cafe and play areas from toddlers up to teenagers close to the velodrome and involve conversion of the BMX track to allow wider use and miles of mountain bike trails. But before the work planting up the southern plaza's pleasure gardens can begin in March, much of the hard-surfaced concourse outside the Olympic stadium has to be removed. The work forms part of efforts to turn the park, which had to accommodate up to 200,000 people at any one time during the Games, back to a more "human scale".

Phil Askew, project sponsor for landscape and public realm, said: "This will be a very significant new urban park, the largest new urban park in this country for a century. The south of the park will be much more urban in nature, it will be a festival-ly, bustling, busy area. When you go up to the north it's seen as a much more verdant, green area with biodiversity and ecology as well as being a great place to have a family day out." He said the south plaza was "seen almost as a 21st century pleasure garden", with the themes of perennial and tree planting in the 2012 gardens planted along the river taken up on to what is currently the concourse outside the stadium.

The vast walkway linking the north and south will be stripped down to a series of bridges that reveal the lock and waterways underneath and will even allow the creation of a natural amphitheatre running down to the water, which could host cinema screenings. Close to the ArcelorMittal Orbit will be a large lawn area where festivals could be held.

Mark Camley, director of park operations, said a 13-metre wide tree-lined avenue will lead visitors from the southern area towards the northern end of the park, with signs and other street furniture kept to a minimum to prevent "overly urbanising" the area. But in order to allow people to continue to get into the stadium from Stratford station easily, "there will be a big plaza roughly half the size of Trafalgar Square so that we can get that traffic route flow-through," he said.

There's also a focus on wildlife, with the wetlands put in before the Games being maintained and decisions made not to light waterways as the River Lee and canals are important for species. The north park also has reed beds, grassland and brown field areas and broad-leaved woodland and hedgerows, which all create habitat for different species. Mr Askew added: "We worked very hard to think about the sorts of species which should be here, not just native but local. We've planted a lot of black poplars which came from cuttings taken before the work started which have been grown on and brought back again."

The north part of the park is expected to open for the one-year anniversary of the start of the Games, while the southern plaza containing the pleasure gardens will open in spring next year.

[Rob2012]

The Park is like a completely different place six months on; snow, mud and scaffolding whilst the rebuilding goes on....

VIDEO OF OLYMPIC PARK VENUES TODAY:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21203933

PHOTOS:

Water Polo venue - https://twitter.com/danroan/status/294812542621073408/photo/1

Inside aquatics centre - https://twitter.com/danroan/status/294764574048153601/photo/1

Outside aquatics centre - https://twitter.com/danroan/status/294763783191158784/photo/1/large

Velodrome - https://twitter.com/danroan/status/294727572149923841/photo/1

Hockey stadium (gone) - https://twitter.com/danroan/status/294723897218187265/photo/1/large

All from Dan Roan - BBC - https://twitter.com/danroan

[DannyelBrazil]

I like those plans of legacy to avoid White Elephants. London is the first Olympic to take this seriously. Hope Rio can reach similar results.

[intoronto]

I like those plans of legacy to avoid White Elephants. London is the first Olympic to take this seriously. Hope Rio can reach similar results.

How about Sydney I would argue none of their venues are white elephants.

I guess its limited to Commonwealth countries

[runningrings]

Atlanta, too.

I would say Atlanta was the first real cut-throat, non-white elephant, legacy driven Olympics. London just made it look cool.

[paul]

Were there white elephants from LA84?

[runningrings]

IIRC, LA used many existing venues. I can't think of any venues (off the top of my head) that were specifically built for 1984. A big change following the mega projects of 1960-1980, which had varying degrees of legacy success.

Indeed, you could say Madrid's 2020 Olympics would be the most reliant on existing venues since Los Angeles 1984 and Melbourne 1956.

[The Tower Bridge Fox]

Atlanta, too.

I would say Atlanta was the first real cut-throat, non-white elephant, legacy driven Olympics. London just made it look cool.

Ripping up the athletics track to make a Base ball stadium isn’t really an Olympic legacy.

that’s what London it trying to avoid.

[paul]

...this is more about who didn't leave unused/unneeded
stadiums or facilities. Turner Field is a thriving facility and has been constantly
since 1996; I’d say that’s a good thing. Had Atlanta decided to leave an
athletics stadium intact THEN it would be the white elephant we are talking
about.

There is a very broad legacy left from the 1996 games in
Atlanta, it’s one of the reasons the city is so spectacular today.

[Rob2012]

There is a very broad legacy left from the 1996 games in Atlanta, it’s one of the reasons the city is so spectacular today.

Exactly. and Ken Livingstone knew this which is why he spoke of Atlanta as a potential model for London's legacy all the way back in 2004. Theirs is perhaps the closest Games legacy to ours because both cities used their Games for inner-city urban regeneration rather than simply choosing a site on the edge of the city for a new Olympic Park. Atlanta had its problems, legacy wasn't one.

[runningrings]

Ripping up the athletics track to make a Base ball stadium isn’t really an Olympic legacy.

that’s what London it trying to avoid.

Exactly - legacy. Atlanta had no need for a 80,000 seat athletics stadium - so they slightly downsized to cater for a sport that would see the stadium utilised - baseball. Unlike London, this arrangement was signed, sealed, (and to be) delivered, years before the 1996 Olympics opened.

Similarly, Sydney also has an outstanding post-Games legacy in Stadium Australia. It sees use throughout the AFL/NRL seasons, with major events to fill in the gaps. It too was downsized post-Games.

[runningrings]

Exactly. and Ken Livingstone knew this which is why he spoke of Atlanta as a potential model for London's legacy all the way back in 2004. Theirs is perhaps the closest Games legacy to ours because both cities used their Games for inner-city urban regeneration rather than simply choosing a site on the edge of the city for a new Olympic Park. Atlanta had its problems, legacy wasn't one.

If that is referring to Sydney then that is a pretty misleading description. Sydney Olympic Park is located in the geographic heart of Greater Sydney, Homebush Bay. While it is a 20+ minute rail journey from the City, it is at the heart of the urban population. It is literally 20 minutes in any direction to the bulk of Sydney's population. In light on London, I think people forget that Sydney Olympic Park is also a major urban renewal project, a massive former industrial site and quarry redeveloped into a highly sustainable sporting, entertainment, commercial and residential hub that is still under construction today. Its evolution from 2000 to 2013 has been as significant as the changes from 1993 to 2000.

[Michelle]

Weird. Seeing the venues now actually makes me sad.