This week marked a significant milestone in the run-up to London 2012; 200 days until the biggest sporting global party commences in the United Kingdom. However, the week was not a particularly positive one for organisers and British competitors, instigating the first doubts of the year regarding how successful the Games will be for the country.
The first disaster has been the continuing ticketing fiasco. Last week, 2012 organisers requested Ticketmaster to suspend the website and resolve the issues that were causing chaotic and confusing scenes as the re-sale process started up. We are now at the end of another working week, and the news has just been announced that after being down for all this time, it will finally re-launch next week. This is the world’s biggest ticketing operator, and they have failed majestically throughout the distribution of Olympic tickets, disappointing many, including some individuals who at times thought they had grabbed themselves a seat only to subsequently found out otherwise. The company are attaching blame to the high demand for tickets; what did they expect?!We are a sport-mad country, and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, of course there was going to be high demand! Ticketmaster seem to struggle with coping demand, with the site regularly crashing when major acts release tickets for massive gigs. The recent Take That tour being a recent example. However, providing most sessions end up being sell-outs, I imagine Games organisers will not be too bothered about the palaver that has ensued beforehand.
One thing spectators are hoping for in the summer is British success. This week, the men’s handball side were thrashed by their Austrian counterparts, leaving the team still with only one competitive win to their name ever. The aim for the side is to make the top-eight during the Games. This appears wholly unrealistic, as that is likely going to require two victories. In other words, they need to improve their win column by 200%. Now I understand competing in front of your home crowd at the Olympics can boost performance, but surely, this is an unrealistic ask of the men’s side? The team rarely train together and are struggling to make any impact against opponents that they should be eyeing up as potential opportunities to gain another victory against, whilst the team’s fitness levels are being identified as a reason for such heavy defeats. Handball is one of the biggest sports in Europe, and it is perhaps quite surprising it has yet to gather the same interest in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, tickets have sold well for it, but if the aim is to increase British participation in the sport, crowds are going to want to see close encounters and hard-fought efforts from the British boys; something that currently looks to be an unlikely event. The side may be inexperienced but an underdog always has a chance and that is what the British side need to remember.
The next disaster for London’s Organising Committee was the re-naming of the Handball Arena in the Olympic Park. Naturally, the committee probably hoped the move would slip under the radar, but the ‘Copper Box’ is now at the forefront of a dispute, with British Handball campaigning for the name to be reverted back to its original title. To be fair, chief executive, Paul Goodwin, makes a good argument when he said the following, "Why have they not renamed other facilities in a similar vein? Perhaps the Olympic velodrome will be called 'the big round wooden building' or the basketball arena renamed as 'the marshmallow'?" However, what concerns me is why Goodwin seems more worried about the venue's name where his sides will play, rather than developing the teams so they may actually achieve their targets. Does it really matter what the name of the arena is called? Do you think Manchester City's players worry that they are playing at the Etihad Stadium rather than the City of Manchester Stadium? Also, unlike the velodrome, the handball centre is not staying specifically to that sport once the Games have finished. Instead it is being reformed into a multi-use community centre. In fact, the arena is being used for a variety of sports during both the Olympics and Paralympics, so why does handball believe they own the venue? It has led me to question whether British Handball have raised the issue just to draw more attention to their sport in the lead up to the Games, but to me, they have instead looked to have decided on a rather pernickety and irrelevant issue, that has made their reputation more laughable.
Finally, and arguably the most concerning story, was the revelation that the participation targets that the Olympics legacy was meant to provide, now appear to have been radically over-estimated. This is by no means a shock, but I think many in the British sporting community were hoping that Sport England could pull a shock out the bag and achieve the targets, if only to provide a positive boost, and that the Olympics are getting people hooked on sport rather than just spending three weeks being clued to their television sets watching it. The concept was to get more children active, particularly as the ‘obesity crisis’ is getting continually muted as a British problem. But when you look back on the bid, I think when Britain made its legacy promises in Singapore, some of them were made more to appease Olympic officials, knowing full well that they were unlikely to be achieved. I think most of the public were aware that many of the aims were going to fail, if you did not, I think you are slightly deluded. These are promises to tick a box on the Olympic committee’s check-list, but even if they are failed to deliver, it will never stop those Games occurring. So should we really make a fuss of the post-sixteen drop-out from sport? It has always happened, and the Olympics are not going to radically change that scenario.
The week has therefore been full of many set-backs, but there has been some positive news. The men’s gymnastics team qualified for the tournament having won the test event, whilst we are yet to hear of any problems regarding the infrastructure at any of these events. I do worry whether the Olympic Stadium will receive its Council clearance legitimately though. Can you really see 40,000 attending the BUCS athletics Championships (the current test event proposal)? Having gone through the university system, I am aware that university sport is light-years behind America’s equivalent. They will be lucky to get an audience of a thousand. Gaining the required certification for the Games prized and iconic asset is the biggest hurdle for LOCOG to overcome now in my opinion. Regardless, once the Games are underway, this is when they will be judged as to whether they are a success or failure. Not debates over venues, or legacy promises, but whether the three weeks are a massive national celebratory party, assisted by British athletes achieving great triumphs on a daily basis.
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