As the fireworks blasted off into the London sky on Sunday night, our nation felt proud. Proud that we could stage one of the greatest Olympic Games ever, that our athletes performed so admirably and earned the tagline ‘Our Greatest Team’, and that more countries were able to participate than ever before. The 16 days of sporting drama that were London 2012 are over. But in many ways the story is only just beginning.
Remember that dramatic day in Singapore – 6th July 2005? London was chosen as the guardian of the 30th Olympiad for what it promised not only during the Games themselves, but also afterwards. We promised to inspire a generation, to provide the athletes of tomorrow with a better chance of sporting participation, to rebuild the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves in East London and to promote a lasting environmental legacy. Of course, keeping all of these promises will be a challenge, but if we can pull it off, then London 2012 has redefined what staging an Olympic Games is all about.
Back in 2005, after a quick study of the history books, Lord Coe and his colleagues hatched plans to avoid the catastrophe of past Olympic ‘legacies’. Remember Athens in 2004? It was the second-most expensive Games in history (behind Beijing 2008) costing over £10 billion, most of which still needs to be paid back to the government. Today, all of the venues are crumbling away with no use whatsoever for the local community and the economy is in crisis.
Even one of the most popular Olympics of all time – Sydney 2000 – was not entirely flawless. The running of the Games itself was remarkably smooth and the today’s Olympic Park area, hosting over 130 organisations, employs some 12,000 people. But Sydney ultimately disappointed. Forward planning was severely lacking for five years, policies were only drawn up after the Games were over and tourism in New South Wales fell in the early 2000s. Perhaps most embarrassingly, the number of children involved in sport declined.
London 2012 has already moved far beyond the achievements of both Athens and Sydney. The heart of the Park, the Olympic Stadium, will host the 2017 World Athletic Championships. Whichever football club claims it, most likely West Ham, the 80,000-seater stadium is highly adaptable as parts can be removed easily and suited for whatever use the new owners have in mind. Elsewhere, the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority will work with the Olympic Legacy Company to ensure the other venues are used for many years to come.
For example, the Lee Valley Hockey Centre, set to become the home of British hockey, will stage the 2015 European Championships. The Velodrome and BMX track will become the Lee Valley VeloPark, which will form a cycling hub suitable for all ages and abilities and include mountain bike trails and road racing circuits. And Greenwich Leisure Centre will be taking control of the Aquatics Centre, home to the swimming pools, which should attract hundreds of thousands more visitors every year from 2013.
But don’t think that the legacy of London 2012, the People’s Olympics, are confined to the boundaries of the capital. Sport England has already invested £1.5 billion of lottery-funded money into grassroots sport, spread across 26 different sports and 46 governing bodies all over the UK. Moving forward, their £135 million initiative, People, Places, Play, hopes to maintain the legacy of sports involvement in cities across the UK, such as maintaining facilities and training coaches who will lead grassroots development. Meanwhile, Wales and Northern Ireland have been given £264.1 million and £173.8 million respectively to develop a whole range of facilities.
Many are worried, though, that the coalition government are endangering the potential of the Olympics to “inspire a generation”. In the autumn of 2010, £162 million of sport funding was cut from English schools and 110 School Sport Partnerships have shut as a result of shortages – a decline of 37%. Furthermore, the compulsory two-hour PE allocation per week was removed from all schools. It appears that the 21st century focuses on exams and academic box-ticking – from SATS to GCSEs and A levels – are placing more pressure on pupils and correspondingly less emphasis on physical activity.
In what was a partial U-turn last week, David Cameron announced that competitive team sports would be made compulsory for all primary school children in England, the idea being that fewer children will be playing “for fun” and more with the objective of winning. However, while this appears an attractive prospect on paper, it could easily backfire and produce the opposite effect. Focusing on team sports could shun a whole range of other sporting activities (too many to list here), reduce the choice available and may even disillusion children who are not as able as others. We need to encourage, not force.
Another hurdle to overcome is reversing the damage caused by past governments to our sporting facilities. The Tories of the later 1990s and the Labour governments after 1997 encouraged local councils to sell off their school sports playing fields to private developers and PFI projects for a handy source of cash. Suffice to say this policy has been a dagger to the heart for many schools, seriously limiting sports participation levels. What’s more, many PE teachers today are not qualified trainers or experts in their field, something which has gone unnoticed for years. Our schools need the latter type who can motivate children of all abilities and dedicate extra time to those with the potential and interest to go further.
The effects of this have been well documented over the last two Olympics. Around a third of British athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics were educated at private schools, and this proportion was still around 20% for London 2012. You may think this is a fairly low proportion, until you realise that private school pupils comprise only 7% of the entire student population. It is therefore clear that the children from richer backgrounds are getting a disproportionate advantage compared to everyone else in terms of lower pupil-teacher ratios and better facilities.
It would be a national tragedy if thousands of children across the UK were inspired by the Olympics, but were unable to realise their dream for one reason or another. If PE lessons can provide a breadth of sporting activities emphasising enjoyment above all else, then those kids who want to take things further in whatever sport can do so during after-school clubs. There is also the School Games project, managed by the Youth Sport Trust and Sport England, which provides the opportunity for those who want to take things to the next level aged between 3 and 13 to compete more seriously against the best in each region.
So it appears there is work to do if London 2012 is to fulfil its promise of a lasting sporting legacy. But sport is only one part of what was outlined in Singapore back in 2005. Another key element has been the restructuring of local communities and regeneration in many deprived areas of London. Stratford, once a site for shipbuilding and a hub for the railway industry, was until recently a contaminated, neglected area. Now, thanks to regeneration efforts, it has been transformed into one of the most exciting parts of the capital. The site of the Olympic Park is a biodiverse, beautiful and living landscape which, according to the London Wildlife Trust, has at least 45 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats and 102 hectares of other open space. And who could forget Westfield Stratford City, one of the world’s biggest shopping centres, which opened its doors last year?
The current Athletes’ Village will become the site of a housing revolution. From 2013, Stratford East Village will house over 6,000 people in some 2,800 affordable, mostly rentable, homes. The key players in this ambitious project are housing providers QDD, Triathlon Homes, and a range of excellent services will be installed, including over 30 shops, leisure facilities and better transport links. A few are sceptical about how cohesive these communities will be, but the fact some 675 social rented homes will be allocated by Triathlon Homes later this year should provide a useful transition period.
Education and giving young people a chance underpins all of these projects. Some £70 million has already been spent on the most deprived areas of London since last year’s riots, helping the most desperate people. This has also helped the provision of apprenticeships, from which approximately 67,000 young people have benefited. Since 2005, some 10,000 previously unemployed people from East London have worked in construction and training schemes to build the 560-acre Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and the London Employment and Skills Taskforce aims to create over 20,000 training places going forward. So by 2014, Stratford will support a wealth of sporting venues, entertainment and jobs for everyone.
But will there be a lasting economic legacy? Well, if we look back at Olympic Games held since 1964, the vast majority have seen a decline in growth during the run-up to the games and afterwards. We are likely to see the same issues facing London. This is mainly because many tourists, who would have visited the capital in any ordinary year, have postponed their visits until after the Olympics are over in anticipation of Olympic chaos. It is why we have seen many streets of London almost deserted recently, which has affected hotels and restaurants in particular. However, in the long term, the Olympics will be worth every penny spent. Lloyds Bank has predicted the Olympics will contribute some £16.5 billion to the economy over the next four years, mostly from the projected 4.5 million extra visitors and foreign business investment. Who knows, it might even help our economy emerge from its current recession.
Last, but not least, the Sustainability Plan outlined by LOCOG and the ODA was a message to the world that the UK is willing to be a key world player in tackling mankind’s greatest challenge – climate change. The Plan hopes to encourage biodiversity, use smart waste management and cut carbon emissions across a whole range of areas. The various commitments include halving emissions from the new buildings by 2013 against 2006 levels, use 20% of energy from renewable sources and supply materials from the buildings via rail or water. Incredibly, almost 98% of demolition and construction waste from the Park has been reused. From this small sample of aims, it is easy to see why London 2012 is the most environmentally-sustainable Games of all time.
When we celebrated winning the right to host the 30th Olympiad back in 2005, the prospect of sixteen days of sporting entertainment was only a small part of our joy. From what has already been promised, it will top every Olympics to date in terms of benefiting people’s lives. Lord Coe, now Olympic Legacy Ambassador, proclaimed last night: “This may be the end of these two glorious weeks in London, but what we have begun will not stop now.” Let’s hope so. The long term legacy of the People’s Olympics could be quite extraordinary.
With regards to the percentage of people at private schools it’s worth noting the statistics. Whilst only 7% of the population as a whole is educated in Private schools, that rises to 18% of people at sixth form and, as has been pointed out previously, the State cannot be expected to afford a boating lake or equestrian centre for every school. Hence when private schools provide scholarships and bursaries (from their own pocket) for our future champions that shouldn’t be attacked but praised.