Four years ago in Beijing, he captured the imagination of sports fans across the country by winning India's first-ever Olympic medal in boxing. As the London Olympics approach, ace boxer Vijender Kumar, who now enjoys star status in India, is eyeing the top of the podium.
Vijender said he wants to complete the task he left unfinished in Beijing when he enters the ring in the British capital.
"Though I won a bronze in the Beijing Olympics, I feel I can improve on it in London. I feel I left a task incomplete in Beijing and can finish it in London by changing the colour of my medal to white or yellow," he told Mail Today.
The 26-year-old Vijender may be determined in his approach, but he faces an uphill task in London as young contenders, and a familiar nemesis, have prevailed over him on crucial occasions.
Vijender was beaten in the first round of the 2011 World Championships by Cuban Emilo Correa Bayeux, who also ended the Indian's campaign in Beijing in 2008. Vijender could qualify for the London Games only in the final qualifiers in Baku in April, and there too he lost in the semi-finals.
Will he cope with the stiff competition in London?
"Competition was there ever since I started boxing and will be there even after I will hang up the gloves. I don't think too much about competition because the more you think about it, the more your resolve is weakened. I train hard and give 100 per cent in the ring. This is all I am going to do in London," said the 2010 Asian Games gold medallist.
"Wearing the India colours also encourages me to do that extra bit, which probably works in my favour. I think support and affection of the people from India will help me get better results in London," said the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awardee.
The boxer, also the first Indian to win a medal at the World Championships in 2009, keeps a low profile, is reserved by nature, and carries himself with dignity, despite achieving much in his career. These qualities make him popular among boxing fans to the extent that three of the current Olympic qualifiers - Shiva Thapa (52kg), Vikas Krishan (56kg) and Sumit Sangwan (81kg) - claim to have taken up boxing after getting inspired by Vijender.
The three have put Vijender on a pedestal and he is determined not to let them down at the Olympics.
"I used to take inspiration from my seniors in the early days of my career and now these youngsters take it from me. So, whenever on tour, I consider them as friends and help them in every possible way. In London, I would love to live up to their expectations," he said.
Vijender is a witness of the transformation in Indian boxing over the last few years. He has seen the sport grow in India from the time when boxers had the reputation of being punching bags to now when they are feared in the ring. He says India can expect a good return from their boxers in London.
"There was a time when boxers from other countries would hope to face an Indian in order to score an easy win. But my Beijing medal changed the psychology of Indian boxers. They feel they can dream and win, and that put pressure on our opponents. Our results in last four years are a testimony to that. And if we fight with the same resolve in London, we can came back with more than one medal," he said.
Will he be one with a medal dangling around his neck at the London Games? Only time will tell.
Source: indiatoday.intoday.in
London 2012 Olympic torch taking the scenic route to the Highlands - Stv.tv
The Olympic torch is taking the scenic route to the Highlands as it passes Loch Lomond and Loch Ness.
The flame is being carried 169 miles by 92 torchbearers from Glasgow to Inverness on Saturday, the second leg of its eight-day tour of the country.
The first torchbearer of the day was 16-year-old Emma Baird who was nominated for her determination in overcoming health problems to play sport.
Despite suffering Upper Femoral Epiphysis and spending time in a wheelchair she is now part of her school football team.
Emma passed the flame to veteran Olympian Hamish Hardie MBE who competed as a yachtsman in the 1948 London Olympics.
Mr Hardie, who is currently the vice-chair of the Clyde Maritime Trust, took the flame on board the restored Glenlee Tall Ship on the River Clyde.
He said: "It is a great pleasure and honour to welcome the Olympic Torch on board Glasgow's ship Glenlee. It is the only Clyde-built sailing ship still afloat in Great Britain and was built in 1896 - the same year that the first Olympic Games were organised by the International Olympic Committee."
The torch is being carried through Luss, Tarbet and Crianlarich on the banks of Loch Lomond before touring the Highlands.
The flame will travel across Loch Ness by boat from Fort Augustus to Drumnadrochit and visit the weekend RockNess music festival at Dores.
Soul-pop star Emeli Sande will carry the torch during the relay as well as perform at a torch celebration concert for the second night in a row.
Ms Sande will join dance acts and local performers at the Northern Meeting Park in Inverness, following her performance in Glasgow last night.
The Brits' Critics' Choice winner said: "I think that's going to be a really special moment. It's a real honour to get to do that. I wasn't expecting it. I can't wait.
"I don't think within my lifetime we're going to be able to do this again, have the Olympics in my country, so it's definitely something I'll look back on and it will always be a fond memory."
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Source: news.stv.tv
London 2012: London bus drivers vote to strike over bonuses - BBC News
Bus workers in London have voted to take strike action in a row over their workload during the Olympics.
Nearly 40% of Unite members working for 21 bus companies voted 94% in favour of strike action. No dates have been set.
The union, which is asking for a £500 bonus, says bus workers are the only London transport workers not to receive an Olympics bonus payment.
Transport for London (TfL) said bus workers were employed by private firms who set their pay.
Dates for strike action could be announced early next week.
Unison says it expects 800,000 extra passengers to travel on buses during the Games.
'Patience run out'It said workers on London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railways, Network Rail and Virgin would all receive between £500 to £900 in extra payments.
In May, a survey of 2,955 London bus and rail passengers commissioned by the union found that 88% were in favour of Olympic bonus pay.
Peter Kavanagh, Unite regional secretary for London, said: "It's a disgrace that London's mayor, Boris Johnson, and the bus companies have allowed this dispute to get this far.
"Our members are only asking for an extra £17 a day which will just about buy you a pint of beer and a portion of fish and chips at the Olympics.
"Our members want the Games to be a success but their patience has run out."
Leon Daniels, TfL's managing director of surface transport, has previously said: "London bus drivers are employed by private bus companies and their pay and conditions are set by those companies.
"If bus drivers are required to work additional hours they are always paid overtime accordingly."
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
So THAT'S how it feels to be a pigeon: Defying vertigo, the incredible view from the top of the highest building in Europe - Daily Mail
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The only other human beings any higher than me anywhere in Britain - or Europe for that matter - are in aircraft or up mountains. I really am the king of the castle up here.
In fact, I can see a castle down below but it looks so puny that its toy soldiers are invisible. It’s just the teeny-weeny Tower of London.
It’s a pity that haze has descended, because visibility today is down to just seven or eight miles. So I can see London’s Olympic stadium to the east, Hampstead Heath to the north. But on a really good day, you can see as far as Southend and the North Sea in one direction, Berkshire in the other.
This is the best view in Britain for those without helicopters. From up here, it really is the London of a Lilliputian miniature village
In a year or so, everyone will be able to come up here to the 72nd floor of The Shard, the European Union's tallest building, and look down on the capital of the UK
Sometimes, of course, this place is just too tall for its own good. During much of Sunday’s Thames Jubilee pageant, for example, it had its head in the clouds. Literally.
In a year or so, everyone will be able to come up here to the 72nd floor of The Shard, the European Union’s tallest building, and look down on the capital of the United Kingdom. For now, though, it is still work in progress.
Some poor soul has yet to clamber out and dismantle the crane which has just finished attaching the last steel girder to the top of this 1,016ft stalagmite. Inside its glass walls, a thousand workers are still beetling away on the wiring and plumbing.
But the outside is virtually finished. And a month from now, the red carpet will be unfurled for a grand royal inauguration. The Duke of York is coming to do the honours, along with the Prime Minister of Qatar, the tiny Gulf emirate which is busy buying London as a second home (the Stock Exchange, Harrods, the Olympic Village . . .).
The outside is virtually finished. And a month from now, the red carpet will be unfurled for a grand royal inauguration
This is the best view in Britain for those without helicopters. From up here, it really is the London of a Lilliputian miniature village.
You can stare at an empty road and see how quickly congestion breaks out. It only takes one van driver doing a spot of unloading. Who’d have thought that the metamorphosis of a traffic jam could be so absorbing?
At this altitude, you realise what a lot of boat traffic there is on the River Thames, how much green space there is in South London, how lots of red buses aren’t red on top.
The tranquillity is astonishing. The viewing deck is open to the elements, yet it sounds like the countryside — without birds. The pigeons don’t venture this high. Train-spotters and model railway enthusiasts will be glued to the comings and goings on the rail-sprawl below.
True, this thing would not greatly impress the average New Yorker. Plonk it in Manhattan and it would be just another face in the crowd. But, in Britain, it is monumentally different. It isn’t even finished and already has the ‘iconic’ tag slapped on it for evermore. You need only write ‘The Shard’ on an envelope and your letter will get here.
Considering the size of it — 32 acres of floorspace protruding from an area smaller than a football pitch — one might have expected more controversy. This is by far the most prominent landmark London has ever seen. There were certainly angry voices during the planning stages a decade back.
But while organisations like English Heritage argued that The Shard would diminish the dominance of other historic buildings, public opposition has never really taken off.
The Prince of Wales, who is not without views on architectural matters, has confined himself to the observation that it looks like ‘an enormous salt cellar’. ‘He hasn’t had much to say about us really,’ says Irvine Sellar, the man behind it. ‘But his brother, the Duke of York, has always been a great supporter.’
Sellar, 72, has been eating and breathing this project for 14 years now. He is the veteran property developer who bought Southwark Towers, an unprepossessing office block on the south bank of the Thames, in 1998.
And then he had a spot of luck. Within weeks, the Blair Government decided on a new policy of encouraging major new developments attached to transport hubs. And Sellar’s new building was slap bang on top of London Bridge Railway Station.
He decided not to go big, but huge. And he soon had the backing of the new Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.
‘Luck is an evenly dispersed commodity, but you have to make the most of your opportunities,’ he says. As someone who built up one property empire and lost the lot — in the early Nineties — and then built another, Sellar knows about risk. ‘Back then, I had the Rolls-Royce, the plane, the big house and it was a long fall,’ he says. ‘But I had a few loyal friends, I got lucky with a couple of deals and if you have bad news and you’re fit and healthy, then you just have to say: “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life”.’
Sellar’s first fortune was born out of Carnaby Street fashion in the Sixties and Seventies (his wife, Elizabeth, is a former model). His second fortune, rooted in commercial property, puts him in 395th place in the latest Rich List with an estimated worth of 190 million. London-born and bred, he divides his time between homes in London, Surrey and the Sussex coast. No bolthole overseas in the sun? ‘I’d never go there enough. It’s a waste of time.’
A tennis-mad grandfather who does not even include his birthday in the slimmest of Who’s Who entries, he doesn’t do politics and says London has been ‘very lucky’ to have both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson as mayor. But he is no fan of the coalition system. ‘We need strong leadership,’ he says.
Having bought his plot at London Bridge, he wanted to plant something distinctive and historic on the skyline. But he says that, from the outset, aesthetics rather than size was the dominant factor. So, he recruited the distinguished Italian architect, Renzo Piano, an odd choice, perhaps, since Piano disliked tall buildings, finding them ‘arrogant’ and inaccessible.
But Piano saw the opportunity to do something new. The Shard is not a City skyscraper. It peers down on the bankers from across the water in the relatively deprived South London borough of Southwark. Piano took his inspiration from ships which used to populate the Thames and from the profusion of churches dotting the old London skyline. He wanted to create a new spire, but this one would be full of light.
Modern skyscrapers are rather like celebrities, always in sunglasses whatever the weather. This building would not be clothed in dark, reflective glass. The Shard would remove the shades.
In an early Press conference, while struggling to find the mot juste, Renzo Piano likened his vision to a ‘shard of glass’. The name stuck.
‘I wanted to call it LBT — London Bridge Tower,’ says Sellar. ‘But the marketing people talked me round. They said: “The Shard’s a great nickname. Let’s keep it”.’
London's world famous Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament overlook the river, with giant Waterloo station on the southern side
Landmarks: The London Eye is clearly visible from the top of the Shard, as is the vast expanse of Waterloo Station adjacent to it
The BT Tower stands tall in front of Regent's Park in the background and the bright green domed roof of the British Museum in the foreground
Sellar says he wanted to build a ‘vertical town’ as opposed to an office block. The average skyscraper is all about cramming in the optimum number of worker bees. But if you set out to build something which includes offices, restaurants, a hotel and some very grand apartments, then each section will have different needs.
Hotel guests and residents need to look out of the window in a way that office workers don’t. Therefore, you make the residential floors smaller so that everyone is nearer the outside. Office grunts can stare at the wall. That’s why this thing tapers from a large base to a pointy top.
The fatter, lower section is all offices until three floors of restaurant space kick in from floors 31 to 33. Above that, it is a five-star Shangri-La hotel all the way to the 53rd floor. The upper section will be among the most expensive and unusual apartments in Europe — each with an estimated price of more than 30 million and a 360-degree view of the metropolis.
But the residents will still have the likes of you and me clomping around above them. Because floors 68 to 72 will be observation decks like the one I am on now. The uppermost levels (rising to the equivalent of a 95th storey) will house plant and machinery in what surely constitutes Britain’s most spectacular attic.
The very top consists of several shards of glass which simply taper off into thin air. This a clever optical illusion, since it fools the human eye into carrying on upwards, suggesting that the Shard is even taller than it actually is.
Robert Hardman experiences life on the 72nd floor of the highest building in Europe, The Shard in South London
Some poor soul has yet to clamber out and dismantle the crane which has just finished attaching the last steel girder to the top of this 1,016ft stalagmite
And so it would have been, had it not been for the Civil Aviation Authority. The original plan was for something 1,400ft tall, but the custodians of Britain’s skies decided this represented a hazard to air traffic. Piano’s plan was cut back to 1,000ft.
Needless to say, the process was not straightforward. Sellar was preparing his initial planning application when terrorists brought down the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Suddenly, no one was keen on new skyscrapers. When he finally got his planning permissions, there were strings attached — not least a requirement to give the paying public the viewing platform on which I am now standing.
A full decade after Sellar had bought the site, he had not even started building when the 2008 banking collapse stopped the project in its tracks. Along came the Qataris with their bottomless shopping trolley and ended up with 80 per cent of the equity.
Even now, it is unclear who is going to rent all this office space or pay 30 million for a flat in Southwark. But London has plenty of bored trillionaire non-doms. The hotel portion of the tower has already been leased and there are said to be several takers for the various restaurant spaces.
It is self-evidently a bold addition to the London skyline. I like its originality. And it is an eloquent riposte to those dreary modernists who spent all last weekend moaning that Britain is stuck in the past. But there will be some people who hate it, just as many people regarded, say, St Paul’s Cathedral as an eyesore when it opened.
They might care to follow the example of the French writer, Guy de Maupassant, who hated the Eiffel Tower so much that he ate in its restaurant every day. When asked why, he explained that it was the only place in Paris where he didn’t have to look at it.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Please don't patronise us - using words like 'puny' and 'teeny-weeny'. Also, vertigo is not a fear of heights, it's dizziness. But I likethe Skyscraper, it has a good design, andO hear that there are a few more going up aswell.
- Mike, Bedford, 09/6/2012 11:33
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