Olympics 2012 World

In merely seven months, London will host the 2012 Olympics. For many, the Olympics are a high-flying festival of fun, with the world’s finest athletes competing under the global media spotlight. For others, the games are a hyper-commercialised pageant of corporate power that encourages jingoism while devouring taxpayer money.

Thanks to the glitzy gerbil wheel of spectacular Olympism, we tend to plunge ahead to the next Olympics without seriously considering what happened at the last one. But Britons would do well to think about the Olympics’ track record, and what, in some ways, has become the customary chasm between pre-games word and post-games deed.
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Olympic year is almost upon us. Gird yourself for stories of waste, danger, congestion, elitism and corruption. We are living in an age of anxiety. The likelihood of things going wrong, and a vivid sense of the venality and incompetence of those in charge, has gripped the public imagination. Optimism withers. Pessimism is hunched in every corner, waiting to pounce, and “London 2012″ will be no exception.
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Gabon, Morocco and Egypt have much to live up to when they take their place at the London Olympics next year.

That is because the continent’s record at the Olympic football tournament is a good one. Nigeria and Cameroon have both won gold – Nigeria also took silver in Beijing – and Ghana have been bronze medalists. African teams could make up a quarter of the 16 contenders in London, if Senegal come through their play-off against an Asian side. While Egypt and Morocco have plenty of experience at the highest level, for Gabon it will be a first ever appearance at a global football event.
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London 2012 Olympics supremo Sebastian Coe has defended a controversial budget hike for the Games’ opening and closing ceremonies, saying it will make for the “largest piece of television ever”. The British government last week agreed to more than double the budget for the ceremonies to 81 million pounds ($127 million), sparking criticism by Olympians such as world-record-holding marathon runner Paula Radcliffe.

“The government saw what we have created in the main ceremonies and wanted to invest more in this unique promotion of Britain to four billion people around the world,” Coe told reporters in Beijing on Sunday. Coe — in the Chinese capital for an international meeting with the Paralympic movement — said criticism by Radcliffe, who called for the extra cash to be spent on grassroots sports, was misguided.
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Eight months from the start of the Olympics, new figures released by Sport England show that just 111,000 more people have become involved in sport since 2007, just 11 per cent of the target they have been pursuing for the last four years.

The figures also reveal falling participation in three major sports, football, swimming and tennis, suggesting that the Olympic effect is failing to inspire interest in sport. Just four out of 23 funded sports have recorded an increase over the four years, with the vast majority of new participants coming in athletics, primarily through running.
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London: The security budget for the 2012 London Olympics has doubled, a government report showed, with plans to recruit almost 14,000 extra personnel. The operation to provide security at more than 100 venues has swollen after the decision was taken to boost staff numbers, the December 2011 Olympic Quarterly Economic Report showed yesterday.

The report stressed that the increase was not in response to a specific security threat. The overall budget for the Games remains at £9.3 billion ($14.5 billion), with £528 million so far unspent. The security cost has risen to £553 million, the figures from July to September showed, up £282 million on the 2010 spending review baseline.
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