London 2012: F1 track plan among Olympic Stadium bids - BBC News

London 2012: F1 track plan among Olympic Stadium bids - BBC News

Plans to turn the Olympic Stadium into part of a Formula 1 track are among four bids to use the venue after the 2012 Games.

Football clubs West Ham and Leyton Orient are other bidders, together with the UCFB College of Football Business.

An original deal for West Ham to lease the £486m stadium was scrapped last year amid legal wrangling.

The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) says bids will be assessed before any negotiations begin.

It says a bid was tabled by Intelligent Transport Services, in conjunction with F1.

The proposal would reportedly allow another British round of the world championship in and around the stadium in East London.

UCFB, which offers degrees in football business, is based at Burnley FC's Turf Moor ground and is an affiliate of Bucks New University.

It is understood Orient's proposal is based on a ground share with West Ham, although the Premier League club has previously insisted it is not considering that arrangement.

F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone said last month that he had been consulted by the Intelligent Transport Services company about plans to use the stadium for a race.

Ecclestone told the Telegraph: "This is a firm that happened to be bidding for use of the stadium, not to own it. They came up with a scheme whereby Formula 1 would race around the stadium, inside it, outside it. They wanted to make sure I would be interested."

Orient chairman Barry Hearn refused to comment on a possible ground share, but told BBC Sport he hoped the League One club's bid could succeed.

"There is no point dwelling on the design of the stadium and the faults of the stadium," he said.

"We have to get on with it, we have to make a fist of it and we have to make sure the Government and the people of this country get maximum value for the investment that has gone into the Olympic Stadium.

"Our idea does that and I think it forms part of a legacy that people in this country can be proud of. Bearing in mind this is the only time in our lifetime that we are ever going to hold the Olympic Games, we need to get something out of it.

"A mixture of usages and a mixture of opportunity within the Olympic Stadium will give us the feeling that we have spent our money wisely and that is really what we are trying to achieve. All sides have to exercise common sense and move forward. I think we have created a very interesting scheme that can do just that."

Essex County Cricket Club has dropped plans for tenancy at the stadium after its partner, the University of London, pulled out of the process.

It has already been announced the 80,000-capacity Olympic Stadium will be reduced after the Games to a 60,000 venue, which retains a running track, and will host the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

The LLDC says it is possible more than one bidder could be successful, with a decision expected in the autumn.

Preferred bidder status has been granted to iCITY, which wants to turn the Olympic press and broadcast centres into a design, technology and research base which might create more than 4,000 jobs. The scheme includes a conference centre, pedestrian square, cafes, restaurants and bars.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

London 2012: don't be a sceptic – this isn't just about the Games - The Guardian

I long ago got bored with being an Olympics sceptic. Where's the challenge? Where's the joy in simply lowing along with the media herd?

Of course, the whole thing seethes with absurdity. There are those "reassurance" missiles planted on people's roofs, which if used would ensure that terror jets crash and burn in several bits of London rather than one. Behold, the fattest disposable McDonald's you've ever seen at an event that's meant to inspire us to love the gym. How about those shivering sports stars spending four lost hours on a bus from Heathrow to the athletes' village when train and tube would have wafted them to Stratford in 90 minutes tops?

Yet the more anti-Olympics sentiment I've encountered, not just in recent days but throughout the build-up years, the more doggedly optimistic I've become. It's a wary optimism, but no mere contrarian urge. The big point of the hosting the Games, let's recall, is not a few weeks of running, jumping and national flag-waving but to pile momentum behind helping hard-up east London catch up with the capital as whole.

Should we, perhaps, not have bothered? Might it have been better had £9bn of public money not been shovelled the Olympic boroughs' way? Would a more virtuous nation have left them, with their child poverty, overcrowding and chronic unemployment, without a new public park and top-flight sports amenities to go with the new transport links and shopping mall that the promise of the Games helped to haul in?

We can argue, as I would, that such a massive wad of taxpayer cash should have been spent in the wider area in different ways. But without the Games, would a fraction of it have been forthcoming? Would it have been more virtuous of a Labour London mayor (Ken Livingstone) or a London Labour MP who was also minister for sport and culture (Tessa Jowell) not to have fought to harness the ludicrous Olympic allure to the larger cause of rejuvenating parts of the capital that have been hurt by de-industrialisation and historic neglect, and giving at least some of those living there a better chance in life?

It's madness, but also reality. For all the boosterism, the bombast and the preposterous impositions of the International Olympic Committee, what matters most is what happens next. And some of it is going to be good. Take the Olympic Park itself. I walked around it the other week and believe that when opened to the public, starting in a year's time, it will be fragrant, elegant and full of life. Whatever the fate of the main stadium, I'm confident the sports venues will be great to gaze at and a joy to use – and I'll be at the front of the queue.

We can mourn a lost, low-profile nature reserve, but if toads don't thrive in the designed space that has replaced it, if bees don't buzz there and if bats don't breed beneath the new bridges over the freshened strands of the River Lea, a lot of gardening and wildlife experts will have got a great deal wrong. Are we opposed to public parks? Would we prefer Green, Victoria and Brockwell gone?

The twilit industrial zone that has also been cleared away provided great material for passing poets of ruination – and I wasn't immune to its unglamorous charms myself – but not many people had jobs there. The Olympic borough of Newham was so devastated by the loss of London's docks that Professor Anne Power of the London School of Economics has likened its history to Liverpool's. Do we want it to be left to decline as Liverpool was?

There is no doubt that big, urban redevelopment projects create losers as well as winners, and that the goals of big vision dreamers and local people on the ground can be hard to reconcile. There's no denying, either, that Olympics have a disreputable past as a catalyst of regeneration. But with London, there is so much to play for.

Those lost in lamentation should instead direct their emotional energies towards big decisions the mayoral corporation will take about the park's future job and housing provision and the approach of the host boroughs to ensuring that their poorest residents derive the maximum benefit from the great sweep of change planned for the Lower Lea Valley as a whole.

Intense and often prosaic political battles need to be fought on terrain that's less gratifying for plaintive artists, but where the fates of people who lead less privileged lives will unfold over the coming decades. Arguments over whether legacy promises have been kept, including how they should be measured, will go on for just as long.

But success isn't so hard to define: a sub-region of the capital whose existing residents are healthier, wealthier and happier than they were before and whose newcomers contribute to keeping things that way.

The Games are just one chapter of a much bigger London story, from which many other cities will seek to learn. It is one giant regeneration test case. The truly Olympian struggle has barely begun.

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Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Olympic torch arrives in Kent to kick off four-day county tour - Kent Online

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Torchbearer Nesii Burns runs through Tunbridge Wells

Martin Apps

Giovanni Merlo hands over the flame to Patrick Collins

Jess Banham

Excited children await the Olympic torch in Tunbridge Wells

Martin Apps

Crowds line The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells, ahead of the Olympic torch arriving

Schoolchildren await the arrival of the Olympic torch in Tunbridge Wells

Martin Apps

Hundreds of people turn out to see Dame Kelly Holmes with the Olympic torch at Tonbridge Castle

Matthew Walker

The Olympic torch has arrived in Kent - to the delight of thousands of cheering spectators in Tunbridge Wells.

Flag-waving fans turned out in force to paint the town red, white and blue as they lined the streets to welcome the flame to the county.

Crowds up to six people deep whooped as each of the 10 relay runners proudly held the torch aloft through the town in the sunshine.

The Olympic torch is carried through Eridge Road, Tunbridge Wells by Emily Barnes. Picture by Sarah Nunn The torch entered the county for the start of a four-day tour just before 11.30am.

It was only in the county for about half-an-hour before heading to Crowborough, in East Sussex.

However, Kent was given more Olympics torch excitement this afternoon at Tonbridge Castle.

Kent-born Dame Kelly Holmes, who won gold in the Athens Olympics in 2004 carried the flame in the castle grounds with Frank Verge, a torchbearer in the 1948 relay.

Hundreds of people gathered in the town to catch a glimpse of one of Kent's most successful sporting daughters with Mr Verge, who was 22, when he ran from Platt through Ightham.

The torch entered Tunbridge Wells at Mount Ephrain Road at 11.24am before snaking through the town to Eridge Road at just after midday.

The first torchbearer in Tunbridge Wells was Italian sports writer Giovanni Merlo, who handed over the torch to British sports journalist Patrick Collins.

Patrick handed over the flame to Russian former athlete Olga Bogoslovskaya.

The sprinter won a silver medal in the 4x100m relay in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Dame Kelly Holmes runs with the Olympic torch at Tonbridge Castle with Frank Verge

Dame Kelly Holmes with Olympic torchbearer veteran Frank Verge

Among the other torchbearers was charity worker Alex Gerrity, 20, 17-year-old dance teacher Samantha Wheelwright and champion cyclist Emily Barnes - also 17 and pictured above left.

The relay had particular poignancy for 15-year-old torchbearer Nesii Burns.

She battled a rare birth defect called proximal femoral focal deficiency, which affects the pelvis.

Nesii - who used to have one leg 9cm shorter than the other before undergoing two gruelling operations - is now hoping to inspire other children with the same condition.

The Olympic torch relay through Tunbridge Wells

The torch will travel a total of 108 miles today - carried by 137 torchbearers - before ending the day in Hastings.

But it will be back in Kent tomorrow, starting in Hamstreet, and touring the county until Friday afternoon.

Children gather in Tunbridge Wells to welcome the Olympic torch

Don't forget to follow our unique multimedia coverage throughout the four days.

We will have a team of reporters and photographers out covering the whole event - along the route and even on the convoy.

We will be giving you blow-by-blow coverage of the relay online and on air at kmfm - with regular updates on our interactive map.

Don't miss out on your personal souvenir of Kent's torch relay.

Our 32-page supplement is being specially printed, and will be out in the shops from first thing on Saturday.

It will feature the highlights of all four days of Kent's relay - with loads of pictures of the once-in-a-lifetime event.

For just 50p, the supplement will be available in most supermarkets and newsagents.

If you can't get hold of a copy and would like one, call our team on FREEPHONE 0800 424450.

LONDON MATRIMONIAL SOLICITORS

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

London 2012: F1 track plan among Olympic Stadium bids - BBC News

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