London 2012 Olympics Tickets and Tours: Lee River Rafting Centre Opens

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The Princess Royal has unveiled the Lee Valley White Water Centre, the first brand new venue for the London 2012 Olympic Games to be completed. The £31m project, which incorporates the 2012 Olympic slalom canoe course, was finished on schedule and will be open to the public from April 2011. Britain's top canoeists have exclusive use of the facilities until that time.


"I've been waiting for this course for such a long time - it's absolutely brilliant," said GB's Richard Hounslow. Until now, World bronze medallist Hounslow and his British team-mates had trained at Nottingham's Holme Pierrepont course. We now have in Britain the best white water stadium in the world. But the entire squad will now move from Nottingham to Hertfordshire and base themselves at Lee Valley ahead of London 2012, offering what could prove a crucial home advantage.

"Our programme has chosen to relocate and, personally, I think that's a brilliant idea," said Hounslow. "To train here day in, day out, will be so good for us. "After April [once the course opens to the public] other international teams can relocate here if they want to, but I can't see it happening, so for us it'll be a really big advantage." The venue, near Waltham Cross, will be operated by the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and will offer the public rafting and canoeing facilities, on both the main 300m Olympic course and a separate 160m intermediate run. Temporary stands will allow up to 12,000 spectators to watch the Olympic events in 2012, with hopes high for a British medal after David Florence won silver at the Beijing Games in 2008.


The £31m course was completed in just under 18 months. "The completion of the White Water Centre - on budget and over 18 months before the Games - is a huge milestone," said John Armitt, chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority. "As the first brand new 2012 venue we have finished, it is a clear sign of the early legacy the Games are already delivering." Construction at the site began in July 2009 and has involved more than 150 workers. The course uses enough material in its banks, obstacles and venue landscaping to fill the Royal Albert Hall, while canoeists must navigate a drop in height of 5.5m from start to finish.

"The biggest thing about the course is the amount you can change it," Hounslow told BBC Sport. "There's a new system which means you can put obstacles wherever you want - you don't want to build a course out of concrete and then find something doesn't quite work. "Here, we can tweak things until we have the perfect configuration. And it's just fun. It's a little bit cold in this temperature, but it's great fun. In 25 years it will still be a very good course."


British Canoe Union chief executive Paul Owen said: "We now have in Britain the best white water stadium in the world. "We look forward to providing a sensational event for the 2012 Olympic Games in a venue with a lasting legacy." Weymouth - where the sailing events will take place - was the first venue to be completed after London won its Olympic bid, but work largely involved enhancing pre-existing facilities - whereas Lee Valley is an entirely new development.


Olympic organisers expect the velodrome to be the next completed venue, early in 2011, followed by the Olympic Stadium.

Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.

London 2012 Summer Olympics Tickets & Tours: International Olympic Committee's Shopping List Revealed

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As Spyns gears up to launch is London 2012 Summer Games website, Londoners are starting to resent the growing list of demands by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Entire hotels have been reserved for IOC fart catchers, the Union Jack must be smaller than the Olympic Flag and, of particular insult, French will be the official language of the London 2012 games.

In a WikiLeaks world, Britain's document cache is just as long, just as embarrassing to the UK, and just as closely held as the collected thoughts of the U.S. diplomatic corps: it is the complete, ­contractually binding and previously ­confidential set of demands made by the 115-member International Olympic ­Committee (IOC) on poor old London for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Like the WikiLeaks, the Olympics leak is by turns creepy and amusing. And it is just as revealing in its detail. Londoners already knew, for instance, about the politburo nature of the IOC. What Brits did not know is that London is, according to these contracts, required to provide the IOC and the ‘Olympic Family’ (including the Committee members, staff and officials) with 40,000 hotel-room bookings for the entire duration of the Games.


This includes 1,800 four and five-star hotel rooms for the IOC elite. Six Park Lane hotels have been booked out for the ­duration of the Games, including the Dorchester, the Grosvenor and the Hilton. The 40,000-room booking does not, of course, include accommodation for the competitors themselves — they are having an Olympic Village built for them at a cost to taxpayer of £325 million. Nor is any accommodation being reserved for spectators. On the evidence of the documents, visitors to the Games will probably find that any hotel within a 50-mile radius of London is already fully booked by the third assistant director of the Togolese handball federation and his extensive support staff.


We knew the IOC was being given 250 miles of so-called ‘Zil’ lanes — named after the old Soviet limousines that enjoyed traffic-free passage. They will stretch from London to Weymouth, where the sailing games are being held. It now emerges that there will also be 500 air-conditioned limos whose drivers must wear hats and uniforms. The IOC does love its little details. The hat stipulation is one of literally hundreds of examples of its micro-management. ­London must provide a ‘dance café’ in the Olympic Village, so that the ­athletes can boogie together.


A flower shop is also required, which the IOC insists ‘should ­provide a range of flowers and gifts for customers in the Olympic ­Village’. British taxpayers will be relieved to know that ‘a balloon rental service is optional’. The guidance given by the Olympocrats can be bewildering — it offers pages of information about the employment of housekeepers for the athletes, for example. ‘It is recommended that the same housekeeping staff perform their duties for the same teams daily’, because this will ‘build relationships and trust’, ‘give confidence’ and ‘maintain standards’. Making the bed is not enough.


These IOC edicts are called the ‘Olympic technical manuals’. They are attached to the contract signed by the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, when we won the right to host the Games in July 2005.  The contract itself was later made public, but for years London 2012 and City Hall refused to publish the manuals, furiously resisting Freedom of Information requests on the grounds that the ‘confidence of the IOC’ must not be breached. It took two years of campaigning by Paul Charman, a strikingly determined east Londoner, for the documents to come to light.  The real reason, perhaps, for this sensitivity is not because of the hats, the dance cafés or any of the other petty embarrassments. It is because the documents show that the British authorities have ­cravenly agreed to let the IOC ­create what is, in effect, a state within a state.


During the Games, normal ­London life, including ordinary commerce and the right to basic freedoms, must be subordinated to the five-ring circus that is the Olympic ‘brand protection’ policy. The IOC is paranoid about what it calls ‘ambush marketing’, which it claims is a ‘serious potential threat to the Olympic Movement’ even if it admits that it has, in fact, ‘not been a significant problem in the past’.  Ambush marketing, in the Olympocrats’ eyes, appears to be any branding or promotion for an organisation which has not paid large amounts of money to the Olympics organisers.


Candidate cities, the manuals say, ‘are required to obtain control of all billboard advertising, city transport advertising, airport advertising etc for the duration of the Games and the month preceding it to support the marketing ­programme’. The cost of hiring these billboards alone will surely be enormous. Customs officers and police must ‘co-operate’ in taking action against unapproved Olympics advertising and the ­confiscation of non-official goods. So in other words, police officers may be diverted from catching criminals to enforcing the commercial interests of the IOC. ­Customs officers, instead of searching for heroin and child pornography, may end up targeting fake Olympics T-shirts.


Spectators at the Games ‘must not wear clothes or accessories with commercial messages other than the manufacturers’ brand name’. So, for instance, any ten-year-old boy who is foolish enough to wear his Manchester United ­replica shirt, emblazoned with the commercial logo of the team’s sponsor Aon, could be forced to remove it or be denied admission to the Games.
No ‘athlete or other participant’ at the Games can wear any ­clothing on which the manufacturer’s name takes up more than 10 per cent of the surface area, or 12 square centimetres. No journalist covering the Games is allowed any ‘signage of any kind’, even for his or her own publication — on ‘camera bags, hats or other garments’.


The toughest restrictions apply inside and immediately around the Olympics venues (if you’re a newsagent next to, say, Greenwich Park with a Pepsi sign on your shopfront, heaven help you). But there are also quite serious restrictions in so-called ‘Level 4’ areas — that is, the whole of the rest of the city — in which the organisers of the London Games ‘must attempt to exert as much control over advertising as possible’.  Brand protection teams’ will, according to the manuals, ‘conduct surveillance . . . in the [host] city’. They must ‘attempt to confiscate any infringing ambush material whether inside or outside the venue’.


So much for the idea that it was just the police that had search-and-seizure powers on the streets of London. Some of the teams will be accompanied by ‘an attorney, in case it becomes necessary to serve any court documents’. And they ‘must have a police officer within the team or on call within range to assist if necessary in the enforcement of the orders’. Here, things become even more grandiose. There is even, according to the documents, an ‘airspace plan’ for London 2012, ‘to prohibit any [non-sponsored] presence within the airspace above Olympic venues, and in the ­surrounding areas within the host city’. However, even the IOC has the grace to admit that ‘there may be obstacles to carrying out airspace requirements completely. For example, it may be impossible to alter the regular flight pattern of commercial airlines’.


Long-suffering taxpayers have been given the impression that the Games will put our nation on the global map, but the documents suggest that something rather ­different will happen. In fact, a geographical space off north-west Europe currently occupied by a nation called Britain will, for the duration of the Games, be taken over by an entirely new country. For at every ceremony during London 2012, by contractual requirement, the Olympic flag must be more prominent than the Union flag: ‘Precedence of flags: Olympic Flag, Flag of the Organising ­Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOG) or city, flag of the province, region or canton, national flag,’ the manuals insist.


Her Majesty will doubtless acquiesce to the IOC’s demands for an Olympic ceremony and royal reception on the day before the Games officially open, although it is worth noting that she has little choice. The documents make clear that, as a matter of course, ‘IOC members are presented to the Head of State’, after which they will all watch ‘an artistic programme reflecting local traditions or ­culture’. What a national triumph. Naturally, the costs associated with all of this are not borne purely by the British taxpayer: £1.4 billion of sponsorship has been raised to finance the games, and the IOC will contribute tens of ­millions more.


The trouble is that the burden on the taxpayer has already reached roughly £12 billion. We may be ­paying the piper, but these ­documents show that it is the IOC who is ­calling the tune. In perhaps the most insulting touch of all, London must ‘ensure that billboards and pageantry are displayed throughout the city’.  As well as being in English, ‘such billboards and pageantry shall be in French’ — which is the second language of the IOC. London beat Paris to host the 2012 Olympics, and yet we are required to plaster our capital city with thousands of posters in French. England may still be sore about losing the World Cup last week — but by God, look at the Olympic guidelines and you’ll realise that we dodged a bullet. There really are only so many Zil lanes and smartly dressed chauffeurs a country can put up with.

Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.

London 2012 Olympics Tickets and Tours: Sports & Performing Arts

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An A-list roster from across the arts world, including Mike Leigh, Toni Morrison, Damon Albarn, Cate Blanchett, Rachel Whiteread and Jude Law, will take part in what was today billed as an "extraordinary, once in a lifetime" series of events to coincide with the London Olympics. More than three million people are expected to attend the Cultural Olympiad's London 2012 festival, which if successful, will represent a spectacular turnaround for a project which has been widely derided as a potential flop. David Hockney, asked if he'd like to send a message of support, emailed an artwork from his iPad which included the text "See you in 2012". His Olympics contribution will be a major exhibition at the Royal Academy during the 12-week festival, which will begin in June 2010 – about two months before the sport starts – and run until the end of the Paralympics, which follow the main Games.


Announcing some of the works already commissioned, Cultural Olympiad director Ruth Mackenzie, said: "This is just a small, small taster. We are still 18 months away and we want to hold our fire for when we actually start selling tickets in October 2011. But we are going to tease." So the launch at the Royal Opera House included headlines rather than details. In the visual arts, Rachel Whiteread will be doing "something" in east London, while Martin Creed will be creating a new sound piece, and Olafur Eliasson will be creating an unspecified work. The Nobel-prize winning novelist Toni Morrison is collaborating with the Malian singer Rokia Traoré and the director Peter Sellars on a Desdemona inspired work, while Damon Albarn and his Gorillaz partner Jamie Hewlett will create something new with theatre director Rufus Norris. Regular collaborators, director Deborah Warner and actor Fiona Shaw, will create what is described as "an extraordinary coastal installation".


Ironically, one of the most detailed project synopses came from an artist famous for giving precious little away. Mike Leigh has been co-commissioned by BBC Films and Film4 – normally rivals – to make a short film which will, according to the publicity, be "an Olympic reflection on athletics in general and running in particular, as well as aerobics, karate, football, swimming and Pilates, not to mention taxis and secondhand cars." The accompanying photograph of the Mile End Road in east London may be something of a give away to its setting. Not everyone will have noticed, but the Cultural Olympiad, which has £83m at its disposal, has been going on, with a series of events around the country, since the Beijing games ended in 2008. It was criticised as too uncoordinated and directionless – 'we don't know who's running it' was the complaint among arts leaders – until the arrival of first Tony Hall as chairman a year ago, and then the experienced arts manager Mackenzie as director.


They soon decided that the Cultural Olympiad needed a big bang finale as its main event, hence the 12-week festival in the runup to the Olympics. Mackenzie said they wanted to create an "extraordinary, once in a lifetime" series of 1,000 events that had excellence at their core. The festival is UK-wide; so choreographer Akram Khan will work with post-graduates from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds; the composer James MacMillan will produce a new work to commemorate the anniversary of Coventry Cathedral, 60 years after Benjamin Britten marked its opening with War Requiem; and the film writer Mark Cousins will present a 12-hour history of innovation in cinema that will be screened across the UK.


The festival kicks off at the Ebrington Barracks in Derry with an event devised by the Peace One Day charity which promotes the idea of having one day, 21 September, which is free from conflict – a global day of truce. Jude Law, an ambassador for the charity, will co-produce the event.There will be a lot of Shakespeare in 2012 but full details of the World Shakespeare Festival, co-ordinated by the Royal Shakespeare Company, will be announced next year. A few Bard scraps were though revealed including the fact that the RSC will present plays around the theme of 'What country, friends, is this?' – from Twelfth Night – and there will be specific commissions of Romeo and Juliet from the Iraqi Theatre Company in Baghdad with the Montagues and Capulets being Sunni and Shia; a Richard III inspired spectacle from Rio de Janeiro's Companhia Bufomecanica; and a reimagined Coriolanus from Mike Pearson and the National Theatre of Wales.


The big question was whether the organisers of the Cultural Olympiad would return to the custom of the earliest games and treat the arts as a competitive event, perhaps even awarding their own gold medals. Instead, they've opted for the more conventional model of a festival. The organisers have chosen a risky slow-striptease strategy, in which they dangled a few names yesterday – Mike Leigh, David Hockney, Toni Morrison, Cate Blanchett – while warning that these are only a fraction of the eventual commissions. This is potentially a clever approach – because pundits can be told that the best will be in the rest – but, with tickets not even going on sale until next October, it risks encouraging anticipation fatigue. But the biggest danger for the Cultural Olympiad's director, Ruth McKenzieRuth Mackenzie, on the basis of the repertoire sketched out today, is that she will be accused of turning Britain into a vast Barbican centre.


The events about which she became most excited at the press conference – the UK premiere of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's experimental epic, Einstein on the Beach, and a rare chance to see here a play by the German dramatist Botho Strauss – are all niche theatrical events of a sort familiar from the London International Festival of Theatre: the artistic equivalent of the small-bore shooting rather than the 100 metres. Beyond theatre, there are creators with broader appeal: Olafur Eliasson, after attracting two million people to the Tate with his fake sun, deserves another big stage, and dancer Akram Khan, whose choreography appropriately combines aesthetics and athleticism, is another good fit for this gig. The overall theme of "truce" – including a Peace One Day concert in Derry – is potentially problematic, given that the failure of Osama bin Laden and his followers to sign up means that the games will take place amid one of the biggest security operations in history.


Many will be sceptical about why a sporting event needs an artistic sister – the Ashes and the FIFA World Cup manage without – and, if Mackenzie and her team are going to make the case for spending £83m on supplementary culture, they must find at least some events which match the mainstream, feelgood appeal of the topline sports.


Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.

London 2012 Summer Olympics: Hotels and Politics Don't Mix

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London recently lost a bid to host the 2018 World Cup. A backlash was inevitable but little did we think it would result in bouncing international soccer federation (called "Fifa") VPs from London 2012 hotels. Fifa president Sepp Blatter may be bumped from the swank Dorchester Hotel, not because of a fit of pique from Mayor of London Boris Johnson, but because international dignitaries may pull rank.

Mr Johnson, who initially claimed Fifa executives would not be welcome at the Dorchester Hotel following England’s embarrassing two votes for the 2018 World Cup, has now said it is up to the London Olympic organisers to deal with accommodation issues. Johnson told Inside The Games: “The Dorchester Hotel business is really a matter for Locog and I’m sure they’ll make their decision on the best possible basis. “It’s no secret that we are very upset with Fifa though.”

But it is understood that Locog has received an overwhelming flood of applications including from Fifa but also from other VIP’s and embassies who may want to house visiting politicians and their mandarins at the swish hotel. Anybody who is accommodated at the Dorchester, and other leading London hotels, through the London organisers has to pay for their room. “We have had more applications than rooms available,” a Locog spokesperson said. “We haven’t allocated any rooms to anyone at this stage.”


The Olympic rate is based on a three-year average of the rack rate, which at the Dorchester, with its marble finishes and four-poster bed suites, can eclipse £1,000 a night (roughly $1600/night). Only athletes staying at the athletes’ village are given Olympic accommodation free of charge. Fifa officials have stayed at the hotel previously, including during the official evaluation period of England’s bid last summer.


Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.

London 2012 Olympics Tickets and Tours: IOC Impressed with London's Progress

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Spyns clients planning to attend the 2012 London Olympics with us in a few years can take heart that preparations are proceeding on schedule.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission (pictured right) for the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games ended its seventh visit to the city Friday, following three days of meetings with London 2012 representatives and its partners. The commission, led by Chairman Denis Oswald, visited several venues including Wembley Arena, Earls Court, Hadleigh Farm, the Royal Artillery Barracks and the new velodrome being built in the Olympic Park.

Oswald said, "we can see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place now, and the big picture is rapidly visible. Preparations are advancing at an astonishing rate and LOCOG, the ODA, and their partners should be congratulated for the high quality of the work they are producing across this complex project. The continued support of the British government for the Games has also been key to the progress made since our last visit, and they should be thanked for the efforts that they have made in these challenging times. This underlines the British people's strong connection to sport and to the Olympic Games in particular".


The commission also received updates on the London 2012 volunteer program and ticketing prices in recent months, and welcomed LOCOG's plans to ensure that families of athletes participating at the 2012 Games will be able to secure tickets to events featuring these athletes.


However London organizers refused to back down Friday on their decision to change the Olympic marathon route, but said they may have found a solution to restore a multimillion-dollar fabric wrap around the main stadium for the 2012 Games, reports The Associated Press. Sebastian Coe, head of London 2012, said potential sponsors have offered to pay for the more than half-mile long stadium wrap that was scrapped last month to save $11 million as part of government budget cuts in Britain. He said, "since the decision was made, we have had a number of commercial overtures to fund the wrap..." But sponsors won't be able to brand the wrap with its name or logo since venue advertising is banned at the Olympics.


As for changing the Olympic marathon route, Coe said he made the decision for "operational reasons" to avoid traffic congestion on what will be one of the busiest days of the Olympics.


Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.

London 2012 Olympics Tickets and Tours: Hotel Rates May Double During Olympics

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He won't see a windfall during London 2012.

When demand far exceeds supply, prices spiral out of control. We've seen it happen during the Tour de France (http://www.tdf-tours.com/) and Running of the Bulls (http://www.pamplona-spain.com/). London's Olympic Games won't be any different.

Hotel prices across London may more than double during the London 2012 Olympics, according to market intelligence company Rubicon. However, while hoteliers can expect bumper profits during the course of the Games with demand for the city's 120,000 hotel rooms reaching a high, they could risk losing out in the long term with corporate business expected to plunge by up to 80% over the whole summer period. Traditional package business from overseas visitors is also expected to fall over the summer with tour operators fearing they may be priced out of the market. Rubicon has based its predictions on evidence gathered from Vancouver earlier this year, during the four months around the winter Olympic Games.

Rubicon managing director for Europe Andy Storey said the study shows that hotels should be mindful of losing the revenue they make during the Olympic Games. "Generally hotel owners fail to put enough attention on the shoulder seasons either side of sporting events, and this is what causes them to do worse than in normal years. "It is no surprise that hotels will be busy during the event itself, but London properties should heed warnings and set pricing and market accordingly." Meanwhile, Rubicon believes towns within an easy commute of central London could be the winners during the Olympics, with business travellers and tourists forced to head further afield to find reasonably priced hotel rooms.

Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.

London 2012 Olympics Tickets and Tours: Budget Cuts to Affect Games?

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

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What will be the fate of the London 2012 Olympic games when the Cameron government announces its cuts on October 20?

Sport and Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson told insidethegames he is ready to face impending cuts to his budget, with D-Day approaching in less than three weeks. The Government is set to announce huge expenditure cuts to practically all departments as part of a major spending review on October 20 - with sport in Britain almost certain to face a 30 to 40 per cent reduction in its annual budget.


However, Robertson said he is braced for the worst and has plans in place to help sport through what is set to be an extremely difficult time. Robertson told insidethegames: “It is my absolute intention to protect the funding for athletes and to make sure that all sports have their plans to increase participation up and running. "Any money we have left over will go directly towards the London 2012 legacies we are planning.


"We know what we want to do but obviously we’re not going to release the exact details until we know for sure how much money we’ve got to play with. Sport is one of those things that could almost absorb an incontestable amount of money. You could triple the budget and I could do all sorts of wonderful things, like ensure everyone going through the British education system has full opportunities to participate in every single sport. That would be fantastic but it’s completely unrealistic as we’ve inherited a horrible situation which means that cuts simply have to happen. The fact is I’m going to do my utmost to protect sport regardless of what the financial settlement is on October 20."
Robertson also gave his full support to Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, claiming he is fighting hard to secure sport the best possible settlement when the cuts are made. He said: "To be fair to him, Jeremy is doing everything he can to protect the DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) budget and treat all sectors of it equally. "I know first-hand from being in all of the meetings with him that he is doing everything he possibly can to protect both the DCMS budget and the Olympics budget to the best of his abilities. Clearly though, I am the person inside Government who speaks up for sport and tries to defend it. Once we know what the settlement is, I am determined that we don’t just ‘salami slice’ the top off everything we are funding as I want us to actually sit down and look carefully at what is working well and what isn’t. I obviously want us to carry on doing the things we are doing well. That’s going to mean full funding and fully backing projects that function well and probably cutting out a number of things that don’t function well. I’m determined we don’t simply bumble along as we are, doing everything as we are now, but just rather less well than we have in the past because of the funding cuts."

Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.