London 2012: Some History

London hosted the Olympics twice before. First was in 1908. Oringinally the bid was given to Rome, but after Mount Vesuvius exploded in 1906, London stepped up to the plate as a replacement. They built a stadium, White City, in under  a year, and the games were opened by King Edward VII (great grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II). Tug-of-war was a sport at the time. It was the first times athletes paraded under their flags at the opening ceremonies, and also when the marathon distance was fixed at 26.2 miles (distance of Winfsor Castle to the Olympic Stadium).

In 1948, London held the games after a 12-year absence due to WWII, given without an election. Tokyo was due to hold the games in 1940, and London in 1944. London used the older Wembley Stadium for it’s opening ceremonies. The Empire Pool became the first covered olympic pool in history. They were also the first games to be shown on TV, despite few people owning TVs at the time.

Baseball was voted out of the 2012 olympics, the first vote-out since polo in the 1930s.

First Sri Lankan woman won in the 200m (bronze) in Sydney.

LA won the bid in 1984 by being the only one competing; some financial crisis in 1976 stopped most other countries from bidding.

Lillehammer was the first winter games to be held in a different year from the summer games, two years after the last winter games.

It’s interesting that while it seems like Rio has most of it’s major venues in place, these venues are largely new, created for the Panatlantic Games in 2007. Seeing the various stadiums created for the games, London appears to be somewhat lackluster. It doesn’t look fancy, but it’s apparently equipped with a removable later of stadium seats which can be used for possibly a different venue.

The structure of the stadium is interesting, as it seems to be designed in layers, as noted in the picture. Apparently the lowest layer is dug deeper into the ground.