2012 Sugar Bowl, Final statistics, Virginia Tech statistical recap
Tariq Edwards led Virginia Tech's defense with eight total tackles, six solo and two assisted. Two of these tackles were for a loss for a total of eight yards, with one of the two being a sack for a loss of seven yards. Corey Marshall also had one sack for a loss of four yards, while Justin Tyler and Antone Exum had a combined one sack for a loss of seven yards. JR Collins and Tyler each had a total of seven tackles.


2012 Sugar Bowl, Final statistics, Virginia Tech statistical recap
Collins' seven tackles consisted of five solo and two assisted, while Tyler's tackles consisted of three solo and four assisted. Seven total Virginia Tech players recorded either a solo or an assisted tackle for a loss. Eddie Whitley had five total tackles, three solo and two assisted, and recorded the most tackles for Virginia Tech without recording a tackle for a loss. Kyle Fuller recorded Virginia Tech's only interception, which was also Michigan's only turnover of the game.


2012 Sugar Bowl, Final statistics, Virginia Tech statistical recap
Justin Myer converted four of his five field goal attempts, from 37, 43, 36, and 25 yards respectively. He missed his final attempt from 37 yards in overtime, which allowed Michigan to kick the game-winning field goal on its ensuing possession. Myer also handled the team's kickoff duties, kicking off six times for a total of 336 yards for an average of 56 yards per kickoff, with one of those kicks going out of bounds. Coale also acted as Virginia Tech's punter, punting one time for a total of 36 yards. Three Virginia Tech players returned kickoffs during the game.


2012 Sugar Bowl, Final statistics, Virginia Tech statistical recap
David Wilson returned two kickoffs for a total of 39 yards, with a long of 25 yards. Jayron Hosely returned one kick for a total of 29 yards. Tony Gregory returned one kick for 23 yards, but also was responsible for the fumble that led to Michigan's field goal at the end of the first half.


2012 Sugar Bowl, Postgame effects
The game improved Michigan's record to 11–2, its first 11 win season since 2006, while Virginia Tech's record dropped to 11–3. With the victory, Michigan won the only BCS bowl in which it had not yet been victorious, improved its bowl record to 20–21, and improved its record against the ACC to 19–3. Michigan also moved to 2–0 in overtime in bowl games, with its previous victory being in the Orange Bowl against Alabama. The Superdome was reconfigured to host the Detroit Lions vs. New Orleans Saints National Football Conference (NFC) wild card game the following Saturday. The Superdome would then play host to the BCS National Championship game the following Monday.


2012 Sugar Bowl, Postgame effects, 2012 NFL Draft
As the final game of the season, the game gave Michigan and Virginia Tech players a chance to improve their draft stock before the 2012 NFL Draft. Michigan had three players drafted, with Mike Martin being the first. He was drafted in the third round, 82nd overall by the Tennessee Titans. He was followed by David Molk (226th) and Hemingway (238th). Michigan players not drafted signed free agent contracts with other teams after the draft ended. Ryan Van Bergen subsequently signed with the Carolina Panthers, minutes after the draft ended on April 28. Later that day, Troy Woolfolk and Michael Shaw announced via Twitter through their agents that they had signed with the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins, respectively.


2012 Sugar Bowl, Postgame effects, 2012 NFL Draft
Virginia Tech had three players drafted. David Wilson was the first Virginia Tech player selected. He was drafted in the first round, 32nd overall by the New York Giants. He was followed by Danny Coale and Jayron Hosley.


2012 Sugar Bowl, Aftermath
On May 9, 2013, the two teams worked out an agreement to play a home-and-away in 2020 and 2021, but this series was later cancelled by Michigan. Michigan would have hosted Virginia Tech on September 19, 2020, at Michigan Stadium while Virginia Tech would have hosted Michigan on September 11, 2021, at Lane Stadium.


2012 Sultan Azlan Shah Cup
The 2012 Sultan Azlan Shah Cup is the 21st edition of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup. It was held from 24 May to 3 June 2012 in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. New Zealand won their first ever title by defeating Argentina with 1–0 in the final, while five-time champions India took the bronze medal by defeating Great Britain scoring 3–1.


2012 Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, Awards
The following awards were presented at the conclusion of the tournament:


2012 Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, Statistics, Goalscorers
There were 98 goals scored in 24 matches, for an average of 4.08 goals per match.


2012 Sultan of Johor Cup
The 2012 Sultan of Johor Cup was the second edition of the Sultan of Johor Cup, an annual invitational international men's under-21 field hockey tournament in Malaysia. It was held in Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia from 11 to 18 November 2012.


2012 Sultan of Johor Cup
Germany defeated India 3–2 through golden goal after being tied 2–2 in the final match to win the cup.


2012 Sultan of Johor Cup, Participating nations
The number of teams for this year's cup was the same compared to the previous tournament where six teams competed.


2012 Sultan of Johor Cup, Statistics, Goalscorers
There were 77 goals scored in 18 matches, for an average of 4.28 goals per match.


2012 Summer Olympic development
The 2012 Summer Olympic development process began in 2005, following the successful London bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and ran until the games in 2012. While many of the plans were included in the bid portfolio, which gained the favour of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over the four other bids on 6 July 2005, there were more details released and decisions made afterwards. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) was created to oversee many of these developments, though such a large-scale event requires the co-operation of many other agencies. These organizations are sometimes integral parts of the London 2012 plans, while others are unrelated but can still have a great effect.


2012 Summer Olympic development
The day after the announcement saw one of the worst terrorist attacks in Britain, as London was struck by four bomb blasts. While the motivation was not linked specifically to the success of the bid it was to have an effect on the development and planning of the event.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Timelines
Since the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia the IOC have developed a "master schedule" to ensure that the planning and development of the Games goes smoothly. Gilbert Felli, the IOC Executive Director for the Olympic Games, explained the master schedule as "a timeline of milestones that need to be met for the Games to be delivered on time." On 24 January 2006 LOCOG released full details of their plan, based partly on the IOC Master Schedule.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Timelines
As of early 2005 60% of the venues and facilities were in place. The bid needed to detail the time plan for any further construction work that was required, and the London 2012 team came up with a schedule that would see all the facilities ready by 2011.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Venues and infrastructure
Some plans for 2012 Summer Olympics venues have had to change since the bid was developed.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
The bid team believed that London could end the Games with a surplus of more than £100 million.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
The British Government plans to spend £800 million on infrastructure improvements on the Lower Lea Valley. This is not included in the Olympic budget. The total cost of public transport costs relevant to the Games is estimated at £7 billion, but most of these projects would probably have happened in any case, though much later.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
In order to protect sources of licensing income, the phrase "London 2012" has been registered as a trade mark in addition to existing protection for the Olympic symbol and name. Further protective measures are proposed in forthcoming legislation, some of which have been seen as controversial. Trading Standards officers in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets have already seized unauthorised products.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
Mayor Ken Livingstone pledged the Games Organising Committee would make a profit.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
The costs for staging the Games (£2 billion) are funded from the private sector by a combination of sponsorship, merchandising, ticketing and broadcast rights. This budget is raised and managed by the London 2012 Organising Committee. Meanwhile, a further £9.3 billion in public funding was provided in order to build the necessary infrastructure; according to Games organisers, the sources of the public funding were as follows:


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
On 18 August 2007, The Belfast Telegraph reported that jubilation over winning the right to stage the Olympic Games was becoming more muted as realisation dawns on the public of the enormous costs involved in creating facilities for the athletes. Grassroot sport cuts will fund the Olympics, government figures suggested on 19 August 2007. In November 2007, Edward Leigh MP criticised the organisers for significantly underestimating the cost of staging the games, suggesting they had either "acted in bad faith or were incompetent".


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
On 10 December 2007, Tessa Jowell announced confirmation of the budget announced earlier in 2007. In June 2007, the Ministerial Funders' Group (established to manage the allocation of contingency to the ODA within the overall budget) met and agreed a first allocation of contingency to the ODA, being £360 million out of the £500 million of initial contingency announced in March, to enable the ODA to manage early cost pressures.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
Following its second meeting on 26 November 2007, the Funders' Group has now agreed a baseline budget and scope proposed by the ODA. The total budgeted base cost to be met by the public sector funding package remains at £6.090 billion including tax and excluding general programme contingency as announced in March. This includes the allocation to the ODA of the remaining £140 million from the initial £500 million contingency announced in March.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
There have, however, been concerns over how the Olympics are to be funded. In February 2008, a London Assembly culture and sport committee report expressed concerns over the funding of the games taking away money from London's sports and arts groups. There have also been complaints that funding towards the Olympics has been to the detriment of funding other areas of the UK. In Wales, there has been criticism from Plaid Cymru about the games depriving Wales of money, by using UK-wide funding rather than English funding. The Wales on Sunday newspaper claimed former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair broke his promise to not use National Lottery funding for the Olympic games.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
As at December 2009, the Delivery Authority had allocated £702 million of Programme and Funders' contingency, largely to cover the decisions to publicly fund the Village and Media Centre after it became clear private funding could not be secured on acceptable terms during the 2008 to 2010 economic crisis. According to the Government Olympic Executive and Olympic Delivery Authority risk assessments, the remaining £1,270 million contingency is sufficient to manage risks to the Delivery Authority's programme.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
Also from May 2010, the Olympic budget will be cut by £27 million as part of the £6.2 billion cuts by the new Conservative-Liberal coalition government.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Financing
On 19 July 2011, Hugh Robertson, Sports & Olympic Minister, revealed that he expected the project to be delivered on time and under budget. "With one year to go to London 2012, the Games construction is 88 per cent complete and ahead of time and under budget. That is an extraordinary thing for a Government Minister to be able to say a year out from the Games."


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
There were two London 2012 logos: one for the bidding process created by Kino Design and a second as the brand for the Games themselves. The former is a ribbon with blue, yellow, black, green and red stripes winding through the text "LONDON 2012", making the shape of the River Thames in East London. The latter, designed by Wolff Olins, was published on 4 June 2007 and cost £400,000, as a representation of the number 2012, with the Olympic Rings embedded within the zero. The same logo was used for the first time for both the Olympic and Paralympic games.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
The standard colours are green, magenta, orange and blue. The logo colours were modified to allow the incorporation of a variety of colours, including the Union Flag to promote the handover ceremony. Sebastian Coe at the launch of the logo said:


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
The logo builds upon everything that the organising committee has said about reaching out and engaging young people, which is where our challenge is over the next five years.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
Public reaction to the logo in June 2007 was largely negative, with more than 80% of votes gave the logo the lowest possible rating. Several newspapers have run their own logo competitions, displaying alternative submissions from their readers, while several writers from news agencies criticizing the logo. A segment of animated footage released at the same time as the logo was reported to trigger seizures in a small number of people with photosensitive epilepsy, and in response, a short segment was removed from the London 2012 website.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
In February 2011, Iran complained that the logo appeared to spell out the word "Zion" and threatened to boycott the Olympics, but eventually did not boycott. Alan Cowell from The New York Times said that people had compared the logo to "a broken swastika or a comical sex act between the Simpsons".


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
Olympics branding on a sign at Glasgow Central station, showing passengers where to queue for trains to Hampden Park


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
Flags like these in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester were installed across the UK in green, magenta, orange and blue.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
Large Olympics logos were installed at London landmarks including St Pancras Station (shown here) and Tower Bridge.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Announcements and developments, Logo and graphics
Kew Gardens in London did a large floral display of the Olympic logo.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Venues and infrastructure
The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will use a mixture of new venues, existing and historic facilities, and temporary facilities, some of them in well-known locations such as Hyde Park and Horse Guards Parade. In the wake of the problems that plagued the Millennium Dome, the organisers' intention is that there will be no white elephants after the Games and instead that a "2012 legacy" will be delivered. Some of the new facilities will be reused in their Olympic form, while others, including the 80,000 seater main stadium, will be reduced in size or relocated elsewhere in the UK. The plans are part of the regeneration of Stratford in east London which will be the site of the Olympic Park, and of the neighbouring Lower Lea Valley.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Venues and infrastructure
This has required the compulsory purchase of some business properties, which are being demolished to make way for Olympic venues and infrastructure improvements. This has caused some controversy, with some of the affected proprietors claiming that the compensation offered is inadequate. In addition, concerns about the development's potential impact on the future of the century-old Manor Garden Allotments have inspired a community campaign, and the demolition of the Clays Lane housing estate was opposed by tenants.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Venues and infrastructure
The majority of venues have been divided into three zones within Greater London: the Olympic Zone, the River Zone and the Central Zone. In addition to these are those venues that, by necessity, are outside the boundaries of Greater London, such as the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy on the Isle of Portland in Dorset which will host the sailing events, some 125 miles (200 km) southwest of the Olympic Park. The football tournament will be staged at several grounds around the UK.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
London's public transport was an element of the bid which was scored poorly in the IOC's initial evaluation; however, they felt that if the improvements were delivered in time for the Games then London would cope. Transport for London (TfL) carried out numerous improvements in preparation for 2012, including the expansion of the London Overground's East London Line, upgrades to the Docklands Light Railway and the North London Line, and the introduction of a new "Javelin" high-speed rail service, using the Hitachi Corporation's "bullet" trains. The platforms at Stratford International station (which are at a height designed for Eurostar trains) will be temporarily raised to accommodate the Javelin trains. According to Network Rail, an additional 4,000 train services will run during the Games, and train operators will put on longer trains during the day.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
During the Games, Stratford International station will not be served by any international services as Eurostar services will pass through the station without stopping. Passengers must change at London St Pancras and travel out to Stratford with the Javelin service to reach the Olympic Park. TfL have also announced that westbound trains will not stop at Hackney Wick railway station. Pudding Mill Lane DLR station, which is located within the boundary of the Olympic Park, will close entirely during the Games.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
TfL has also built a £25 million cable car across the River Thames, the Emirates Air Line, to link 2012 Olympics venues. It was inaugurated in June 2012 and crosses the Thames between Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks, carrying up to 2,500 passengers an hour at a heights above 50 metres (160 ft) in the air. It is designed to cut journey times between the O2 arena and the ExCel exhibition centre – both of which are Olympic locations. The system could provide a crossing every 30 seconds.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
The plan is to have 80% of athletes travel less than 20 minutes to their event and to have 93% of athletes within 30 minutes of their event. The Olympic Park would be served by ten separate railway lines with a combined capacity of 240,000 passengers per hour. In addition, the LOCOG planned for 90% of the venues to be served by three or more types of public transport. Two park-and-ride sites were off the M25 with a combined capacity of 12,000 cars 25 minutes away from the Olympic Park.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
Another park-and-ride site was planned in Ebbsfleet which would have capacity for 9,000 cars where spectators could board a 10-minute shuttle bus. To get spectators to Eton Dorney, four park-and-ride schemes were set up. Spectators would be dropped off at Windsor Racecourse with a bridge going over the Thames linking the racecourse to the rowing venue.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
Some lanes on some roads in London will be dedicated to athletes, officials and VIPs.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
Concerns have been expressed at the logistics of spectators travelling to the events outside London. In particular, the sailing events at Portland are in an area without direct motorway connections, and with local roads that are heavily congested by tourist traffic in the summer. However, the Weymouth area did undergo a major upgrade to its road infrastructure. A£77 million relief road connecting Weymouth to Dorchester was built and opened in 2011. Some £16 million was put aside for the rest of the improvements. In addition the plans removed five roundabouts to ease congestion and replaced them with traffic lights. But some residents were unhappy that the roundabouts were removed.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
FirstGroup will provide the venue shuttle and park-and-ride services, services connecting peripheral park-and-ride sites on the M25 with the Olympic Park and Ebbsfleet, and a nationwide network of express coaches to the Olympic Park and the Weymouth and Portland sailing venue. The services will require around 900 vehicles in total, although some will be sub-contracted.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Public transport
TfL have published information to encourage cycling as a mode of transport during the Games. Cyclists, like motorists, are not permitted to ride in the designated Olympic Lanes on London streets. Some designated cycle paths such as the Lea Valley towpath are closed to the public during the Olympics.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
The costs of mounting the Games are separate from those for building the venues and infrastructure, and redeveloping the land for the Olympic Park. While the Games are privately funded, the venues and Park costs are met largely by public money.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
On 15 March 2007 Tessa Jowell announced to the House of Commons a budget of £5.3 billion to cover building the venues and infrastructure for the Games, at the same time announcing the wider regeneration budget for the Lower Lea Valley budget at £1.7 billion.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
On top of this, she announced various other costs including an overall additional contingency fund of £2.7 billion, security and policing costs of £600 million, VAT of £800 million and elite sport and Paralympic funding of nearly £400 million. According to these figures, the total for the Games and the regeneration of the East London area, is £9.345 billion. Then Mayor Ken Livingstone pledged the Games Organising Committee would make a profit.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
The costs for staging the Games (£2 billion) are funded from the private sector by a combination of sponsorship, merchandising, ticketing and broadcast rights. This budget is raised and managed by the London 2012 Organising Committee. According to Games organisers, the funding for this budget broadly breaks down as:


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
On 18 August 2007 The Belfast Telegraph reported that jubilation over winning the right to stage the Olympic Games was becoming more muted as realisation dawns on the public of the enormous costs involved in creating facilities for the athletes. Grassroot sport cuts will fund the Olympics, government figures suggested on 19 August 2007.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
In November 2007, Edward Leigh MP, criticised the organisers for significantly underestimating the cost of staging the games, suggesting they had either "acted in bad faith or were incompetent".


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
There have, however, been concerns over how the Olympics are to be funded. In February 2008, a London Assembly culture and sport committee report expressed concerns over the funding of the games taking away money from London's sports and arts groups. There have also been complaints that funding towards the Olympics has been to the detriment of funding other areas of the UK. In Wales, there has been criticism from Plaid Cymru about the games depriving Wales of money, by using UK-wide funding rather than English funding. The Wales on Sunday newspaper claimed former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair broke his promise to not use National Lottery funding for the Olympic games.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
As at December 2009, the Delivery Authority had allocated £702 million of Programme and Funders' contingency, largely to cover the decisions to publicly fund the Village and Media Centre after it became clear private funding could not be secured on acceptable terms during the 2008 to 2010 economic crisis. According to the Government Olympic Executive and Olympic Delivery Authority risk assessments the remaining £1,270 million contingency is sufficient to manage risks to the Delivery Authority's programme.


2012 Summer Olympic development, Opinions and comments, Financing
Also from May 2010, the Olympic budget will be cut by £27 million as part of the £6.2 billion cuts by the new Conservative-Liberal coalition government.


2012 Summer Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) were an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the group stage in women's football, began on 25 July at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, followed by the opening ceremony on 27 July. 10,768 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participated in the 2012 Olympics.


2012 Summer Olympics
Following a bid headed by former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe and the incumbent London mayor Ken Livingstone, London was selected as the host city at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore on 6 July 2005, defeating bids from Moscow, New York City, Madrid, and Paris. London became the first city to host the modern Olympics three times, having previously hosted the Summer Games in 1908 and 1948. Construction for the Games involved considerable redevelopment, with an emphasis on sustainability. The main focus was a new 200-hectare (490-acre) Olympic Park, constructed on a former industrial site in Stratford, East London. The Games also made use of venues that already existed before the bid.


2012 Summer Olympics
The United States topped the medal table, winning the most gold medals (46) and the highest number of medals overall (104). China finished second with a total of 91 medals (38 gold) and Great Britain came third with 65 medals overall (29 gold). Michael Phelps of the US became the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, winning his 22nd medal. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei entered female athletes for the first time, meaning that every currently eligible country has now sent a female competitor to at least one Olympic Games. Women's boxing was included for the first time, and the 2012 Games became the first at which every sport had female competitors.


2012 Summer Olympics
The Games received general praise for their organisation, with the volunteers, the British military and public enthusiasm praised particularly highly. The opening ceremony, directed by Danny Boyle, received widespread acclaim, with particular praise from the British public, but a minority of widely ranging criticisms online. These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Belgian Jacques Rogge, who was succeeded by German Thomas Bach the next year.


2012 Summer Olympics, Bidding process
By 15 July 2003, the deadline for interested cities to submit bids to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), nine cities had submitted bids to host the 2012 Summer Olympics: Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York City, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro. On 18 May 2004, as a result of a scored technical evaluation, the IOC reduced the number of cities to five: London, Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris. All five submitted their candidate files by 19 November 2004 and were visited by the IOC inspection team during February and March 2005. The Paris bid suffered two setbacks during the IOC inspection visit: a number of strikes and demonstrations coinciding with the visits, and a report that a key member of the bid team, Guy Drut, would face charges over alleged corrupt party political finances.


2012 Summer Olympics, Bidding process
Throughout the process, Paris was widely seen as the favourite, particularly as this was its third bid in recent years. London was initially seen as lagging behind Paris by a considerable margin. Its position began to improve after the appointment of Lord Coe as the new chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) on 19 May 2004. In late August 2004, reports predicted a tie between London and Paris.


2012 Summer Olympics, Bidding process
On 6 June 2005, the IOC released its evaluation reports for the five candidate cities. They did not contain any scores or rankings, but the report for Paris was considered the most positive. London was close behind, having closed most of the gap observed by the initial evaluation in 2004. New York and Madrid also received very positive evaluations. On 1 July 2005, when asked who would win, Jacques Rogge said, "I cannot predict it since I don't know how the IOC members will vote. But my gut feeling tells me that it will be very close. Perhaps it will come down to a difference of say ten votes, or maybe less."


2012 Summer Olympics, Bidding process
On 6 July 2005, the final selection was announced at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore. Moscow was the first city to be eliminated, followed by New York and Madrid. The final two contenders were London and Paris. At the end of the fourth round of voting, London won the right to host the 2012 Games with 54 votes to 50.


2012 Summer Olympics, Bidding process
The celebrations in London were short-lived, being overshadowed by bombings on London's transport system less than 24 hours after the announcement.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) was created to oversee the staging of the Games, and held its first board meeting on 3 October 2005. The committee, chaired by Lord Coe, was in charge of implementing and staging the Games, while the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), established in April 2006, was in charge of construction of the venues and infrastructure.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation
The Government Olympic Executive (GOE), a unit within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), was the lead government body for coordinating the London 2012 Olympics. It focused on oversight of the Games, cross-programme management, and the London 2012 Olympic Legacy before and after the Games that would benefit London and the wider United Kingdom. The organisation was also responsible for the supervision of the £9.3 billion of public sector funding.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation
In August 2011, security concerns arose surrounding the hosting of the Olympic Games in London, following the 2011 England riots. Some countries expressed safety concerns, despite the IOC's assurance that the riots would not affect the Games.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation
The IOC's Coordination Commission for the 2012 Games completed its tenth and final visit to London in March 2012. Its members concluded that "London is ready to host the world this summer".


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Venues
The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games used a mixture of new venues, existing and historic facilities, and temporary facilities, some of them in well-known locations such as Hyde Park and Horse Guards Parade. After the Games, some of the new facilities will be reused in their Olympic form, while others will be resized or relocated.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Venues
The majority of venues have been divided into three zones within Greater London: the Olympic Zone, the River Zone and the Central Zone. In addition there are a few venues that, by necessity, are outside the boundaries of Greater London, such as the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy some 125 mi (201 km) southwest of London, which hosted the sailing events. The football tournament was staged at several grounds around the UK. Work began on the Park in December 2006, when a sports hall in Eton Manor was pulled down. The athletes' village in Portland was completed in September 2011.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Venues
In November 2004, the 200-hectare (500-acre) Olympic Park plans were revealed. The plans for the site were approved in September 2004 by Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney and Waltham Forest. The redevelopment of the area to build the Olympic Park required compulsory purchase orders of property. The London Development Agency was in dispute with London and Continental Railways about the orders in November 2005. By May 2006, 86% of the land had been bought as businesses fought eviction. Residents who opposed the eviction tried to find ways to stop it by setting up campaigns, but they had to leave as 94% of land was bought and the other 6% bought as a £9 billion regeneration project started.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Venues
There were some issues with the original venues not being challenging enough or being financially unviable. Both the Olympic road races and the mountain bike event were initially considered to be too easy, so they were eventually scheduled on new locations. The Olympic marathon course, which was set to finish in the Olympic stadium, was moved to The Mall, since closing Tower Bridge was deemed to cause traffic problems in central London. North Greenwich Arena 2 was scrapped in a cost-cutting exercise, Wembley Arena being used for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics events instead.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Venues
Test events were held throughout 2011 and 2012, either through an existing championship such as 2012 Wimbledon Championships or as a specially created event held under the banner of London Prepares.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Venues
Team GB House was the British Olympic Association's operational HQ up to and during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Designed by architects Gebler Tooth on the top floor of an office building in Westfield Stratford City, it combined the team HQ, athletes' "Friends and Family" lounge, Press Centre, and VIP lounge.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Public transport
London's public transport scored poorly in the IOC's initial evaluation; however, it felt that, if the improvements were delivered in time for the Games, London would cope. Transport for London (TfL) carried out numerous improvements in preparation for 2012, including the expansion of the London Overground's East London Line, upgrades to the Docklands Light Railway and the North London Line, and the introduction of a new "Javelin" high-speed rail service. According to Network Rail, an additional 4,000 train services operated during the Games, and train operators ran longer trains during the day. During the Games, Stratford International station was not served by any international services (just as it had not been before the Games), westbound trains did not stop at Hackney Wick railway station, and Pudding Mill Lane DLR station closed entirely during the Games.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Public transport
TfL also built a £25 million cable car across the River Thames, called the Emirates Air Line, to link 2012 Olympics venues. It was inaugurated in June 2012 and crosses the Thames between Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks, carrying up to 2,500 passengers an hour, cutting journey times between the O2 arena and the ExCeL exhibition centre and providing a crossing every 30 seconds.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Public transport
The plan was to have 80% of athletes travel less than 20 minutes to their event and 93% of them within 30 minutes of their event. The Olympic Park would be served by ten separate railway lines with a combined capacity of 240,000 passengers per hour. In addition, LOCOG planned for 90% of the venues to be served by three or more types of public transport. Two park-and-ride sites off the M25 with a combined capacity of 12,000 cars were 25 minutes away from the Olympic Park. Another park-and-ride site was planned in Ebbsfleet with a capacity for 9,000 cars where spectators could board a 10-minute shuttle train service. To get spectators to Eton Dorney, four park-and-ride schemes were set up. These Park and Ride services were operated by First Games Transport.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Public transport
TfL defined a network of roads leading between venues as the Olympic Route Network; roads connecting between all of the Olympic venues located within London. Many of these roads also contained special "Olympic lanes" marked with the Olympic rings—reserved for the use of Olympic athletes, officials, and other VIPs during the Games. Members of the public driving in an Olympic lane were subject to a fine of £130. Additionally, London buses would not include roads with Olympic lanes on their routes.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Public transport
The painting of Olympic lane indicators in mid-July led to confusion from commuters, who wrongly believed that the Olympic lane restrictions had already taken effect (they were to take effect on 27 July). The A4 experienced traffic jams due to drivers avoiding the Olympic lane, and likewise on a section of Southampton Row, where the only lanes available in one direction were the Olympic lane and the bus lane.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Public transport
Concerns were expressed at the logistics of spectators travelling to the events outside London. In particular, the sailing events at Portland had no direct motorway connections, and local roads are heavily congested by tourist traffic in the summer. However, a £77 million relief road connecting Weymouth to Dorchester was built and opened in 2011. Some £16 million was put aside for the rest of the improvements.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Public transport
TfL created a promotional campaign and website, Get Ahead of the Games, to help provide information related to transport during the Olympics and Paralympics. Through the campaign, TfL also encouraged the use of cycling as a mode of transport during the Games. However, despite this encouragement to use bicycles, members of the public protested that riding bikes on London roads would be more dangerous due to the blocked Olympic lanes, and also protested against a decision to close the Lea Valley towpath during the Olympics and Paralympics due to security concerns.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, International transport
The 2012 Games were a unique operational task and a massive challenge for Heathrow airport. A temporary terminal was created at Heathrow Airport to be used by 10,100 departing athletes after the Games. Up to 35% more bags than normal were expected on 13 August, which was predicted to be the busiest day in the airport's history, according to Nick Cole, head of Olympic and Paralympic planning at Heathrow.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Cost and financing
A study from Oxford University found that the sports-related costs of London 2012 amounted to US$15 billion, compared with $4.6 billion for Rio 2016, $40–44 billion for Beijing 2008, and $51 billion for Sochi 2014 (the most expensive Olympics in history). London 2012 went over budget by 76% in real terms, measured from bid to completion. Cost per athlete was $1.4 million. This does not include wider costs for urban and transport infrastructure, which often equal or exceed the sports-related costs.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Cost and financing
The costs of staging the Games were separate from those for building the venues and infrastructure and redeveloping the land for the Olympic Park. While the Games were privately funded, the venues and infrastructure were largely financed using public money.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Cost and financing
According to The Wall Street Journal, the original budget for the Games was increased to about £9.3 billion (US$15.28 billion) in 2007. The revised figures were announced to the House of Commons on 15 March 2007 by Tessa Jowell. Along with East End regeneration costs, the breakdown was:


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Volunteers
Unpaid volunteers known as Games Makers performed a variety of tasks before and during the Games. A target of 70,000 volunteers was set as early as 2004. When recruitment took place in 2010, over 240,000 applications were received. Sebastian Coe said in February 2012, "Our Games Makers will contribute a total of around eight million volunteer hours during the Games and the Games simply wouldn't happen without them". The volunteers wore clothing which included purple and red polo shirts and jackets, beige trousers, grey socks and grey-and-white trainers which they collected from the Uniform Distribution and Accreditation Centre. Volunteers also wore photo accreditation badges which were also worn by officials, athletes, family members and media which gained them access to specific venues and buildings around the site.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Ticketing
Organisers estimated that some 8 million tickets would be available for the Olympic Games, and 1.5 million tickets for the Paralympic Games. LOCOG aimed to raise £375–£400 million in ticket sales. There were also free events such as marathon, triathlon and road cycling, although, for the first time in Olympic history, the sailing events were ticketed. Eventually, more than 7,000,000 tickets were sold. Following IOC rules, people applied for tickets from the NOC of their country of residence. European Union residents were able to apply for tickets in any EU country.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Ticketing
In Great Britain, ticket prices ranged from £20 for many events to £2,012 for the most expensive seats at the opening ceremony. Some free tickets were given to military personnel as part of the Tickets For Troops scheme, as well as to survivors and families of those who died during 7 July 2005 London bombings. Initially, people were able to apply for tickets via a website from 15 March until 26 April 2011. There was a huge demand for tickets, with a demand of over three times the number of tickets available.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Ticketing
The process was widely criticised as more than 50% of the sessions went to a random ballot, and over half the people who applied got no tickets. On 11 May 2012 a round of nearly one million "second chance" tickets went on sale over a 10-day period between 23 June and 3 July 2011. About 1.7 million tickets were available for football and 600,000 for other sports, including archery, field hockey, football, judo, boxing and volleyball. Although technical difficulties were encountered, ten sports had sold out by 8 am of the first day.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Countdown
During the closing ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, the Olympic Flag was formally handed over from the Mayor of Beijing to the Mayor of London. This was followed by a section highlighting London, One month later, the Olympic and Paralympic flags were raised outside the London City Hall.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Countdown
A countdown clock in Trafalgar Square was unveiled, 500 days before the Games. The clock broke down the following day, but was later fixed. It was a two-sided clock with the Paralympic countdown on the other side. The countdown to the start of the Olympics began with a ceremony for the lighting of the Olympic flame in Olympia, Greece.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Security
The police led the security operation, with 10,000 officers available, supported by 13,500 members of the armed forces. Naval and air assets, including ships situated in the Thames, Typhoon fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles, were deployed as part of the security operation, named Operation Olympics by the Ministry of Defence; the biggest security operation Britain had faced for decades. The cost of security increased from £282 million to £553 million, and the figure of 13,500 armed forces personnel was more than Britain currently had deployed in Afghanistan. The Metropolitan Police and the Royal Marines carried out security exercises in preparation for the Olympics on 19 January 2012, with 50 marine police officers in rigid inflatables and fast response boats, joined by up to 100 military personnel and a Royal Navy Lynx helicopter.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Security
The Ministry of Defence distributed leaflets to residents of the Lexington building in Bow, announcing that a missile system was to be stationed on top of the water tower. This caused concern to some residents. The Ministry said it probably would use Starstreak missiles and that site evaluations had taken place, but that no final decision had taken place.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Medals
Approximately 4,700 Olympic and Paralympic medals were produced by the Royal Mint at Llantrisant. They were designed by David Watkins (Olympics) and Lin Cheung (Paralympics). 99% of the gold, silver and copper was donated by Rio Tinto from a mine in Salt Lake County, Utah in the U.S. The remaining 1% came from a Mongolian mine. Each medal weighs 375–400 g (13.2–14.1 oz), has a diameter of 85 mm (3.3 in) and is 7 mm (0.28 in) thick, with the sport and discipline engraved on the rim.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Medals
The obverse, as is traditional, features Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, stepping from the Panathinaiko Stadium that hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, with Parthenon in the background; the reverse features the Games logo, the River Thames and a series of lines representing "the energy of athletes and a sense of pulling together". The medals were transferred to the Tower of London vaults on 2 July 2012 for storage.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Medals
Each gold medal is 92.5 percent silver and 1.34 percent gold, with the remainder copper. The silver medal is 92.5 percent silver, with the remainder copper. The bronze medal is made up of 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc, and 0.5 per cent tin. The value of the materials in the gold medal is about £410 (US$644), the silver about £210 (US$330), and the bronze about £3 (US$4.71) as of 30 July 2012.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Torch relay
The Olympics torch relay ran from 19 May to 27 July 2012, before the Games. Plans for the relay were developed in 2010–11, with the torch-bearer selection process announced on 18 May 2011. The torch was designed by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Torch relay
On 18 May 2012 the Olympic flame arrived at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall from Greece on flight BA2012, operated by a British Airways Airbus A319 named "Firefly".


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Torch relay
The relay lasted 70 days, with 66 evening celebrations and six island visits, and involved some 8,000 people carrying the torch about 8,000 mi (12,875 km), starting from Land's End in Cornwall. The torch had three days outside the United Kingdom when it visited the Isle of Man on 2 June, Dublin in Ireland, on 6 June, and both Guernsey and Jersey on 15 July.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Torch relay
The relay focused on National Heritage Sites, locations with sporting significance, key sporting events, schools registered with the Get Set School Network, green spaces and biodiversity, Live Sites (city locations with large screens), and festivals and other events. Dumfries and Galloway was the only Region in the whole of the United Kingdom that had the Olympic Torch pass through it twice. A group of young athletes, nominated by retired Olympic athletes, ran the torch around the stadium. These torchbearers were Callum Airlie, Jordan Duckitt, Desiree Henry, Katie Kirk, Cameron MacRitchie, Aidan Reynolds, and Adelle Tracey. Together the torchbearers each lit a petal which spread the fire to the 204 petals of the cauldron, representing the countries that participated in the Games. The cauldron was designed by Thomas Heatherwick.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Environmental policy
The Olympic Park was planned to incorporate 45 hectares of wildlife habitat, with a total of 525 bird boxes and 150 bat boxes. Local waterways and riverbanks were enhanced as part of the process. Renewable energy also featured at the Olympics. It was originally planned to provide 20% of the energy for the Olympic Park and Village from renewable technologies; however, only 9% of it was achieved. Proposals to meet the original target included large-scale on-site wind turbines and hydroelectric generators in the River Thames. These plans were scrapped for safety reasons.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Environmental policy
The focus subsequently moved to installing solar panels on some buildings, and providing the opportunity to recover energy from waste. Food packaging at the Olympics was made from compostable materials – like starch and cellulose-based bioplastics – where it cannot be reused or recycled. This included fast-food wrappers, sandwich boxes and drink cartons. After they had been used, many of these materials were suitable for anaerobic digestion (AD), allowing them to be made into renewable energy.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Environmental policy
Buildings like the Water Polo Arena were, post-event, relocated elsewhere. Building parts like roofing covers and membranes of different temporary venues were recycled via Vinyloop. This allowed organisers to meet the standards of the Olympic Delivery Authority concerning environmental protection. Through this recycling process, the Olympic Games PVC Policy was fulfilled. It says that


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Environmental policy
"The majority of temporary facilities created for the Olympic Games including the Aquatic centre temporary stands, basketball arena, Water Polo Arena, and the shooting facilities at the Royal Artillery Barracks, are essentially big tents. Basically, PVC stretched over lightweight steel frame. This design solution makes them efficient to install, reduces the need for any significant foundations and are, of course, reusable. We were challenged by the public around the use of PVC; but we considered it to be the right material for certain functions. We therefore challenged the PVC supply chain to have certain environmental performance criteria in place, including a take back and recycle scheme" says Kirsten Henson, Materials Manager for the London 2012 Olympic Park.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Environmental policy
London 2012 inaugurated Olympic Games guidelines that included the recycling of PVC.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Cultural Olympiad
The Olympic Charter, the set of rules and guidelines for the organization of the Olympic Games and for governing the Olympic Movement, states that


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Cultural Olympiad
LOCOG shall organise a programme of cultural events which must cover at least the entire period during which the Olympic Village is open.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Cultural Olympiad
The Cultural Olympiad comprised many programmes, with over 500 events spread over four years across the whole of the United Kingdom, and culminating in the London 2012 Festival.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Opening ceremony
The opening ceremony officially began at 9:00 pm British Summer Time (UTC+1) on 27 July in the Olympic Stadium and was called "Isles of Wonder". Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle was its artistic director, with music direction by Rick Smith of Underworld.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Opening ceremony
The Games were officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II, accompanied by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. It was the second Olympic Games opened personally by the Queen, the first being in 1976 in Montreal. The ceremony included a short comic film starring Daniel Craig as secret agent James Bond and the Queen as herself, and another starring Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Opening ceremony
Live musical performers included Frank Turner, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Mike Oldfield, the London Symphony Orchestra, Dizzee Rascal, Arctic Monkeys, and Sir Paul McCartney who performed "Hey Jude" as the closing act. The ceremony transmitted live on BBC One attracted a peak viewing audience of over 27 million in the UK.


2012 Summer Olympics, Development and preparation, Closing ceremony
The closing ceremony was held on 12 August. It featured a flashback fiesta to British music with The Who closing the performance. The ceremony also included a handover of the Olympic flag by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, to Eduardo Paes, Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Participating National Olympic Committees
Around 10,700 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) took part, (85 countries acquired at least one medal: gold, silver or bronze) surpassing the 1948 Summer Olympics in London and the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester as the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in the United Kingdom.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Participating National Olympic Committees
Three athletes from the Netherlands Antilles Olympic Committee, which the IOC Executive Committee had ceased to recognise at the IOC session of July 2011, and one athlete from South Sudan which had no recognized NOC until 2015, participated independently under the Olympic flag.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Participating National Olympic Committees, National houses
During the Games, some countries and continents had a "national house". These temporary meeting places for supporters, athletes and other followers were located throughout London.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Sports
The 2012 Summer Olympics featured 26 different sports encompassing 39 disciplines and 302 events. In the list below, the number of events in each discipline is noted in parentheses.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Sports
Women's boxing was included in the programme for the first time, and 36 women competed in three weight classes. There was a special dispensation for the shooting events, which would otherwise have been illegal under UK gun law. In tennis, mixed doubles returned to the Olympic programme for the first time since 1924.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Sports
London's bid featured the same 28 sports that had been included in other recent Summer Olympics, but the IOC voted to drop baseball and softball from the 2012 Games just two days after London had been selected as the host city. There was an appeal, but the IOC voted to uphold the decision, and the two sports were scheduled to be discontinued after their last appearance at the 2008 Olympics. The IOC then voted on whether or not to replace them; karate, squash, golf, roller sports and rugby sevens were considered. Karate and squash were the two final nominees, but neither received enough votes to reach the required two-thirds majority.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Sports
Although formal demonstration sports were eliminated after the 1992 Summer Olympics, special tournaments for non-Olympic sports can be run during the Games, such as the Wushu tournament at the 2008 Summer Olympics. There were attempts to run Twenty20 cricket and netball tournaments alongside the 2012 Games, but neither campaign was successful.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Calendar
The final official schedule was released on 15 February 2011.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Records
These Olympic Games resulted in 32 world records in eight sports. The largest number of records were set in swimming, at eight. China, Great Britain and the United States set the most records, at five each.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Medal table
A total of 85 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) won medals, 54 of those countries winning at least one gold medal. Bahrain, Botswana, Cyprus, Gabon, Grenada (a gold medal), Guatemala, and Montenegro won their first ever Olympic medals. The United States finished at the top of the table winning 46 gold medals, and a total of 104 medals.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Medal table
China finished second with 38 gold medals and 88 medals overall and hosts Great Britain came in third place winning 29 gold medals and 65 medals overall in their best performance since London hosted its first Summer Olympics in 1908, pushing Russia, who won 20 gold medals and 68 overall medals after doping redistributions (initially 24 gold and 82 total), into fourth place.


2012 Summer Olympics, The Games, Medal table
*   Host nation (Great Britain)  ‡   See subpage: Changes in medal standings


2012 Summer Olympics, Broadcasting
The host broadcaster was Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), an agency of the IOC. The OBS used its own cameras and crews subcontracted from other Olympic broadcasters to cover the events. The base video and audio were sold to other broadcasters, who added their own commentary and presentation.


2012 Summer Olympics, Broadcasting
The official recording format of the 2012 Summer Olympics used Panasonic's digital technologies. The official video was produced and distributed from the International Broadcast Centre in 1080/50i High-Definition (HD) format. Panasonic announced that DVCPRO HD would be the official recording format. OBS London used P2 HD shoulder-mount camcorders.


2012 Summer Olympics, Broadcasting
The IOC wanted television coverage to reach as broad a worldwide audience as possible, and several national and regional broadcasters covered London 2012. In the UK, the BBC carried the Olympics and Channel 4 the Paralympics. The BBC aimed to broadcast all 5,000 hours of the Games. BBC Parliament's Freeview channel was suspended, BBC Three's on-air time was extended so that it could show Olympic events in the daytime, and 24 additional BBC Olympics channels were available via cable, satellite and the internet in the UK.


2012 Summer Olympics, Broadcasting
The US television rights, owned by NBC, accounted for over half the rights revenue for the IOC. Despite high viewership, many viewers were disappointed with NBC's coverage. The operations of broadcasters granted rights to the Games were hosted in the dedicated International Broadcast Centre inside the security cordon of the Olympic Park. YouTube planned to stream the Games in 64 territories in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where there were no official broadcasters.


2012 Summer Olympics, Broadcasting
In Sri Lanka a dispute occurred between Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC) and MBC Networks (MTV/MBC) as to who was the official broadcaster of the Games. This problem was caused as Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) had offered the official broadcasting rights to both networks, as both of the networks were ABU members. So SLRC filed a case against MBC Networks for broadcasting rights at the Colombo Magistrate's Court. Considering the case, the court issued a special court order preventing MBC Networks' Olympic broadcast and stated that SLRC should be the sole broadcaster. However, when the Games started, both networks broadcast most of the events simultaneously. Another dispute had previously occurred between Carlton Sports Network (CSN) and SLRC, but the Sports Minister, Mahindananda Aluthgamage, had stated that SLRC had the exclusive rights.


2012 Summer Olympics, Broadcasting, Olympic Golden Rings Awards
In November 2012, the IOC announced the winners of the Golden Ring Awards for the best broadcast coverage of the Games. Best Olympic Sports Production was awarded to the sailing, produced by Christopher Lincoln, Gary Milkis, and Ursula Romero. The production for the canoe/kayak slalom and the rowing/canoe sprint came second and third respectively. The award for Best On Air Promotion went to NBC with Foxtel and ZDF finishing second and third. NBC Olympics also won the Best Olympic Feature category, as Sky Italia came second and ZDF third.


2012 Summer Olympics, Broadcasting, Olympic Golden Rings Awards
The Best Athlete Profile award went to TV Record's profile of Sarah Menezes, NBC came second with their profile of David Rudisha, and ESPN Latin America took third place with a profile of Miguel Correa and Ruben Rezola. The award for Best Olympic Programme went to NBC, host broadcasters the BBC took second place for Super Saturday (the middle Saturday of the Games), and third place was claimed by the Nine Network for their live coverage of Day 16 of the Games.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing
"Survival" by Muse was announced as the official song of the Olympics, to be played by international broadcasters reporting on the Games. In August 2009, the Royal Mail commissioned artists and illustrators to design 30 stamps, which were released in batches of 10 between 2009 and 2011. The last ones were released on 22 July 2011. Two £5 coins designed by Saiman Miah have been made to commemorate the Olympics. As with other Olympics since 1952, the Royal Mint will strike a set of commemorative one-kilogram gold and silver coins.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Motto
The official motto for the 2012 Summer Olympics is "Inspire a generation". It was chosen to highlight the organisers' commitment to inspire the world, including younger generations, to get involved in sporting events through the Games' legacy.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Logo and graphics
There have been two London 2012 logos: one used for the bidding process, and the other used in the branding for the Games themselves. The bid logo, created by Kino Design, was a ribbon with blue, yellow, black, green, and red stripes winding through the text "LONDON 2012", making the shape of the River Thames in East London. The main logo, designed by Wolff Olins and published on 4 June 2007, is a representation of the number 2012, with the Olympic Rings embedded within the zero.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Logo and graphics
Public reaction to the main logo in a June 2007 BBC poll was largely negative; more than 80% of votes gave it the lowest possible rating. Several newspapers ran their own logo competitions, displaying alternative submissions from their readers, and several writers from news agencies criticised the logo. A segment of animated footage released at the same time as the logo was reported to trigger seizures in a small number of people with photosensitive epilepsy, and a short segment was removed from the London 2012 website in response. It was suggested that the logo resembled the cartoon character Lisa Simpson performing fellatio on her brother Bart Simpson. In February 2011, Iran threatened to boycott the Olympics, complaining that the logo appeared to spell out the word "Zion". However, this boycott did not occur.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Logo and graphics
The official London 2012 Olympic typeface was called Headline 2012 and also suffered some criticism. Journalist Simon Garfield made it number 1 in the list of the "8 Worst Fonts in the World" in his 2010 book Just My Type, commenting that "the uncool font is based on jaggedness and crudeness", although he conceded that it was "a brilliant piece of corporate branding". The magazine Wired pointed out that the typeface was intended for "awareness, impact and memorability as a headline typeface" rather than elegance or readability in long sections of text.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Colours
The four main colours used in the branding of the Games were pink, blue, green, and orange. These colours were chosen to showcase the spirit of the Games: energetic, spirited, youthful, and bright.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Colours
The auxiliary colours used in the branding were dark purple, grey, and gold. These were mostly used in symbols and graphics to offset the brightness of the main colours.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Mascots
The official mascots for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games were unveiled on 19 May 2010. Wenlock and Mandeville are animations depicting two drops of steel from a steelworks in Bolton. They are named after Much Wenlock, a town in Shropshire that holds a forerunner of the current Olympic Games, and Stoke Mandeville, a village in Buckinghamshire where a forerunner of the Paralympic Games was first held. The writer Michael Morpurgo wrote the story concept for the mascots, and an animation was produced. Two stories have been created about the mascots: Out Of A Rainbow and Adventures On A Rainbow.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Mascots
Creative Review magazine liked the mascots, but elsewhere their design was greeted with some disdain. One columnist jested that they were the product of a "drunken one-night stand between a Teletubby and a Dalek". Others have compared them to Izzy, the much disparaged mascot of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. Still others have likened them to Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons. However, the mascots' creators claim that young people find the duo appealing.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Chariots of Fire
The 1981 Best Picture Oscar–winning film Chariots of Fire, which tells the story of two British athletes in the 1924 Olympics, was a recurring theme in promotions for the 2012 Olympics. A digitally re-mastered version of Chariots of Fire was released on 13 July 2012 and screened in over 100 UK cinemas as part of the celebrations, and a 2012 stage adaptation ran in London theatres from 9 May 2012 to 5 January 2013. The film's theme tune was performed during the opening ceremony by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle. The performance was accompanied by a comedic skit by Rowan Atkinson, which included the opening beach-running footage from the film. A new orchestration of the film's theme tune was played during each medal presentation of the Games.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Sponsors
LOCOG and the IOC agreed sponsorship deals with several companies, each assigned to one of four categories; worldwide, tier one, tier two and tier three. The worldwide partners were: Acer, Atos, Coca-Cola, Dow, General Electric, McDonald's, Omega SA, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung and Visa. Tier one partners were: Adidas, BMW, BP, British Airways, BT Group, EDF Energy and Lloyds TSB. The tier two partners were: Adecco, ArcelorMittal, Cadbury, Deloitte, Thomas Cook Group, Cisco Systems and United Parcel Service.


2012 Summer Olympics, Marketing, Sponsors
Tier three partners were: Aggreko, Airwave, Atkins, The Boston Consulting Group, CBS Outdoor, Crystal CG, Eurostar, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, G4S, GlaxoSmithKline, Gymnova, Heathrow Airport, Heineken, Holiday Inn, John Lewis & Partners, McCann Worldgroup, Mondo, Nature Valley, Next, Nielsen Company, Populous (company), Rapiscan Systems, Rio Tinto (corporation), Technogym, Thames Water, Ticketmaster, Trebor and Westfield Group. The companies provided £1.4 billion of funding altogether, allocated evenly between the IOC and LOCOG.


2012 Summer Olympics, Controversies
During the lead-up to the Games, there were controversies over sponsorship, the athletes' use of social media, and several political issues. After a complicated lottery process, thousands of people failed to secure seats for the events they wanted, but a large number of empty seats were observed throughout the Games, even at some of the most popular events. There was speculation that this was due to a failure of corporate sponsors to make use of tickets they had received.


2012 Summer Olympics, Controversies
During the Games, eight competitors in the badminton women's doubles were disqualified for "not using best efforts", when they tried to lose matches in the group stage to obtain more favourable fixtures in the knockout rounds. A number of results in boxing, gymnastics and judo were overturned by officials after initial decisions were appealed against.


2012 Summer Olympics, Controversies
Ye Shiwen faced doping allegations after her gold medal in the women's 400m Individual Medley as she came from being behind the world record in the final 50m to beating it by 1.02 seconds. Furthermore, she swam her last 50m 0.17 seconds quicker than the men's winner of the corresponding race. All charges were later dropped.


2012 Summer Olympics, Controversies
Just before the start of the Men's 100m Final, a spectator threw a plastic bottle into Tyson Gay's lane, intended to hit Usain Bolt who was three lanes outside in Lane 7. The race was unaffected, and Bolt would go on to become the second man in history to defend a 100m Olympic title. The spectator, later identified as Ashley Gill-Webb, was soon arrested after he was struck on the head by Dutch judoka and bronze medalist Edith Bosch, whom he happened to be sitting next to.


2012 Summer Olympics, Controversies
LOCOG Chairman Sebastian Coe later stated: "I'm not suggesting vigilantism but it was actually poetic justice that they happened to be sitting next to a judo player". Gill-Webb later pleaded not guilty to a charge of using threatening words or behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress at Stratford Magistrates' Court. He was later found guilty.


2012 Summer Olympics, Drug testing
It was announced before the Summer Games that half of all the competitors would be tested for drugs, with 150 scientists set to take 6,000 samples between the start of the Games and the end of the Paralympic Games. Every competitor who won a medal was also tested. The Olympic laboratory tested up to 400 samples every day for more than 240 prohibited substances. As of late 2017, 31 medals have been stripped due to doping violations, 15 of which were originally awarded to Russian athletes.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations
At the 2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations  of the 2012 London Olympics, athletes and officials from each participating country paraded into the Olympic Stadium preceded by their national flag to the sound of iconic British modern music. Each flag bearer was chosen by each nation's National Olympic Committee or by the delegation of athletes.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Parade order
By tradition and IOC guidelines, Greece entered first, as the nation of origin of the ancient and the host of the 1896 Summer Olympics modern Olympic Games. The host nation Great Britain (as the United Kingdom is recognized at the Games) brought up the end of the procession. The other nations followed Greece in alphabetical order by name in the language of the host country (English) except for a few instances. As each national delegation entered accompanied by music, the national name was announced in French and English (the official languages of the Olympics).


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Parade order
National name exceptions included shortened, more formal or alternative names, sometimes due to political or naming disputes. Macedonia entered as "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia'" because of the naming dispute with Greece. The Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan) entered with the compromised name and flag of "Chinese Taipei" under T so that they did not enter together with conflicting People's Republic of China (commonly known as China), which entered as the "People's Republic of China" under C. The Republic of the Congo entered as just "Congo" while the Democratic Republic of the Congo entered with its full name.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Parade order
Similarly South Korea entered as "Republic of Korea" under K while North Korea entered as "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". The British Virgin Islands entered under B while the United States Virgin Islands entered as simply the "Virgin Islands", under V. Iran, Micronesia, Moldova, Laos, Brunei and the United States all entered under their formal names, respectively "Islamic Republic of Iran", "Federated States of Micronesia", "Republic of Moldova", "Lao People's Democratic Republic", "Brunei Darussalam" and "United States of America". For the first time in many years, Libyan athletes marched as "Libya", and not "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" as Libya was known during the reign of Muammar Gaddafi.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Parade
Each delegation was led by a flagbearer (listed below), accompanied by a child volunteer carrying a copper petal (camera-left) and a young lady carrying a sign with the country's English name (camera-right). The copper petal was engraved with the name of the nation and would later be used to build the cauldron for the Olympic flame. The volunteer carrying the sign wore a dress constructed with fabric imprinted with images of Olympic volunteers, including those who had not been chosen. Each nation's flag was planted as it arrived at the model of Glastonbury Tor.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Parade
Netherlands Antilles was ineligible to participate independently in the parade, as its National Olympic Committee was unrecognized by the IOC due to the 2010 dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles. Team Dutch Antilleans paraded by default under the Olympic flag, together with a South Sudanese runner whose newly independent country did not yet have an Olympic committee.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Parade
Notable were the debut female Olympic athletes from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Parade
The Team India entered the stadium jointly led by a woman dressed in a red top and blue trousers, who was not part of its team. In India this incident received media attention, but London officials downplayed concerns saying that she was Madhura Nagendra, a volunteer who had been security screened. Some media outlets later identified her as Madhura Honey, a graduate of Communications and Media Studies from Christ College in Bangalore. The Indian team's acting chef-de-mission Muralidharan Raja filed a protest with organisers.


2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations, Countries and flagbearers
Below is a list of parading countries and their announced flag bearer, in the same order as the parade. This is sortable by country name, flag bearer's name, or flag bearer's sport. Names are given in the form officially designated by the IOC.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron
The 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron was used for the Olympic flame during the Summer Olympics and Paralympics of London 2012. The cauldron was designed by Thomas Heatherwick and described as "one of the best-kept secrets of the opening ceremony": until it was lit during the Olympics ceremony, neither its design and location, nor who would light it, had been revealed. For the Olympics it consisted of 204 individual 'petals', and for the Paralympics 164, one for each competing nation.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Commission and design
British designer Thomas Heatherwick was chosen by Danny Boyle to design the cauldron for the 2012 London Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games (the same design would serve both). Heatherwick was a highly regarded designer, responsible for the first prize-winning "Seed Cathedral" at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and the New Routemaster bus introduced in London in February 2012; Boyle was an admirer of his B of the Bang sculpture in Manchester, saying of it 'I loved it so much; it's a tragedy they took it down in 2009 ... These public sculptures breathe life into you.'


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Commission and design
Danny Boyle, in Danny Boyle: Creating Wonder by Amy Raphael, 2013, p. 407.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Commission and design
The brief was that the cauldron should be something that connected all the nations, with the idea of them each bringing a constituent part of it, and also have a story or narrative. It was to be of a human scale, and to be placed among the people in the stadium rather than towering over it. It was also to be transient, like the coming-together of nations during each Games.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Commission and design
Heatherwick said “When Danny Boyle asked us to do this we felt this huge responsibility. We asked people: ‘Which cauldron do you remember?’ And the answer was: none. Our role was to design a 'moment': how could we make this moment manifest in the object?


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Commission and design
We didn't just want to make a bowl on a stick.”  He was also keen to avoid the competitive aspect of designs for the previous Olympics: "We were aware that cauldrons have been getting bigger, higher and fatter as each Olympics has happened and we felt that we shouldn't try to be even bigger than the last ones." Heatherwick and his team spent two months researching and examining ideas, including a weekend spent looking at all previous Olympic cauldron designs.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Commission and design
Another important part of the brief was "Whatever you do, no moving parts". This was due to the failure of the cauldron at the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver, when one of the four moving parts of the cauldron had failed to work. Heatherwick said “When we proposed the most moving parts ever in an Olympic cauldron, we were nervous and feeling a bit guilty about that. But the same man who’d said that to us was the first person to say yes.”


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Commission and design
Heatherwick wanted the cauldron to be a focal point, like an altar in a church, and he described it as symbolising "the coming together in peace of 204 nations for two weeks of sporting competition ... a representation of the extraordinary, albeit transitory, togetherness that the Olympic Games symbolise" The Olympic cauldron comprised 204 separate copper 'petals', and the Paralympic one 164 - one petal from each of the competing nations.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Production
Production began in January 2012 in the workshops of Tockwith, near Harrogate-based firm Stage One. Each 3mm thick petal was unique: designed individually using 3D modelling, hand beaten from copper sheeting, and polished by skilled craftsmen. Each was hand-beaten over its own individual MDF former and took eight hours to produce. The petals were inscribed with the name of the competing country and "The XXX Olympiad - London 2012". Three full sets were made: for Olympic and Paralympic cauldrons, with a third for rehearsals and testing. The work on the cauldron at Stage One took 25,000 man hours.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Production
The cauldron measured 8.5 metres high, 8 metres across when flat on the ground, and weighed 16 tonnes. It was significantly smaller and lighter than those of previous Games: the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics cauldron weighed 300 tonnes. The cauldron burned natural gas, with a variable burn rate. The gas burners were designed by Australian firm FCT Flames, which specialises in the design, manufacture and operation of flame effects for ceremonial events. The mechanical and electrical engineering of the cauldron was complex, due to the large number of moving parts. 15 km of wiring went into the control panels and another 5.5 km into the cauldron itself.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Production
Strict security and secrecy was paramount during construction and testing. The cauldron was given the codename "Betty" (after the dog of the opening ceremony's executive producer Catherine Ugwu). Initial testing took place at Stage One's workshop, which was screened to hide it from public view.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Production
The cauldron was installed in the centre of the arena of the Olympic stadium using a 500-ton crane. This was done overnight on 10 June 2012, in order to maintain secrecy. It was only tested at night during the time that the Olympic airspace restrictions were in place, which stopped press helicopters from getting a view. Part of the cauldron failed during final testing the night before the opening ceremony; this news was deliberately withheld from Heatherwick. Despite all this secrecy, the cauldron was "cheekily hidden in plain sight" in the design on the ceremony ticket wallets.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Olympics
On arriving in London, each national team was presented with an inscribed petal. A 205th petal was given to the athletes competing under the IOC flag.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Olympics
During the parade at the opening ceremony, each petal was carried by a child accompanying each of the teams as they entered the stadium. The children wore gloves to avoid staining the copper. The petals (except from the independent athletes) were then passed secretly to fifteen technicians who, out of sight in the centre of the stadium, fitted them to the ends of the stainless steel stems as they lay flat on the ground. Its location was kept secret until the event; during the ceremony some people had speculated that it might be hidden under the Glastonbury Tor model at the end of the stadium.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Olympics
The identity of the athlete who was to light the cauldron also remained secret. It transpired that, to reflect 'Inspire a Generation' theme of the 2012 Games, seven young athletes were chosen for that honour. Sir Steve Redgrave carried the flame into the stadium and passed it on to one of a team of six young athletes and one young volunteer, each nominated by a famous British Olympian. The torchbearers were (nominator in brackets): Callum Airlie (Shirley Robertson), Jordan Duckitt (Duncan Goodhew), Desiree Henry (Daley Thompson), Katie Kirk (Mary Peters), Cameron MacRitchie (Steve Redgrave), Aidan Reynolds (Lynn Davies) and Adelle Tracey (Kelly Holmes).


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Olympics
The seven stepped forward together to light a petal each. Flames spread radially around the petals, and when all were alight, the stems rose slowly from the floor of the arena and converged to form an upright cauldron with a single, massive flame. An audible gasp went around the stadium as it lifted. The music performed during this part of the ceremony was the specially-commissioned "Caliban's Dream".


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Olympics
After the ceremony, the stadium was closed and on the following night the cauldron moved from infield to the end of the stadium formerly occupied by the Olympic Bell. During this move the Olympic flame was kept burning in a small Davy lamp, similar to those used during the torch relay. The cauldron was relit in its new spot by Austin Playfoot, who had carried an Olympic torch in both the 1948 and 2012 Games.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Olympics
For the closing ceremony, the operation of the cauldron was played in reverse: it opened out until flat on the ground, and the flames in the petals extinguished one by one.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Paralympics
For the opening ceremony, the 164 petals were pre-set prior to lighting in a semi-spherical arrangement, and the flames lit from one side of the dome to the other, unlike the spiral of the Olympic cauldron. It was lit by Margaret Maughan, Britain's first Gold medallist in the Paralympic Games.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, In the Paralympics
After the closing ceremony, the Paralympic cauldron was extinguished by swimmer Eleanor Simmonds and sprinter Jonnie Peacock. All but one of the petals were extinguished; Simmonds and Peacock lit new torches and distributed the fire to other performers across the stadium to represent an eternal flame.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, After the Games
Heatherwick had intended that there would not be a large cauldron left after the Games, but instead each petal was to be offered to competing countries as a souvenir. After London 2012, the cauldron was dismantled and the petals returned to the Stage One workshops. Here they were cleaned to remove most of the dirt, smuts and corrosion from the prolonged period of burning, but not re-polished. Presentation of petals began on 7 November 2012 to the British Olympic Association, represented by Olympian David Hemery, followed by the British Paralympic Association the next day. All petals had been presented to their respective countries by the end of 2012. The presentation boxes were also designed by Heatherwick.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Use, After the Games
The day after the Olympics opening ceremony, details of the design, including a scale model, were added to the exhibition of Heatherwick's work that was running at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A selection of components and mechanisms of the cauldron were put on permanent display at the Museum of London in July 2014, to mark the second anniversary of the Games.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Reception
The cauldron received overwhelmingly positive reviews. The London Evening Standard called it "breathtakingly beautiful", while a reviewer for  The Daily Telegraph commented that "It dazzles both by its exuberance and inventive dexterity". The Guardian said it was "surely one of the most enduring images of London 2012 ... the drawing together of 204 long-stemmed and flaming petals seemed to prompt a collective gasp of delight across the UK – for its symbolism as well as its technical grace."


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Reception
Creative Review said "From the moment it was lit to its last flicker, Heatherwick Studio's cauldron was an absolute star of the Games. Conceptually brilliant and utterly beautiful it was one of the most successful examples of an ambition among the Games' organisers to reinvent the familiar elements of the Olympics." A reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald called the cauldron "stunning".


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Controversy, Siting of cauldron
The London stadium had been designed assuming that the cauldron would sit above, as had become customary, on a part of the roof that was specially strengthened. However, to conform with the brief, the cauldron was not to be "like an emergency police siren sitting on top of a car"; it was to be inside the stadium, at the very centre for its lighting and then moved and burning at one side of the stadium for the duration of the Games.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Controversy, Siting of cauldron
"The spirit Danny was speaking about...was to do with connecting more with people and rooting things, rather than them just being up in the air like a dream in the sky. And we were looking at pictures together in my studio, like the London 1948 games and there the cauldron was sitting in among the spectators in the stadium, it was there with everybody...a participant rather than a beacon in the sky". This was to prove a controversial decision, as it meant that visitors to the Olympic Park to watch the other sports were denied the customary view of the flame over the stadium. The cauldron was therefore shown on video screens around the Olympic Park.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Controversy, Plagiarism claim
In June 2013, New York design studio Atopia claimed that the design was identical to something they had presented to the London Olympic committee (LOCOG) in 2007; they stated they had not raised this earlier because of the restrictive non-disclosure agreement all companies had signed. Heatherwick denied that he had been briefed about Atopia's idea, and was adamant that the design was his alone. Danny Boyle also denied knowing about the earlier proposal, while Martin Green, former head of ceremonies at LOCOG, claimed that the idea had emerged from discussions between Boyle, Heatherwick and himself. The accountants handling LOCOG's affairs after it ended its work in May 2013 later reached an out-of-court settlement, and issued a statement listing two sets of key concepts by Atopia (without specifically acknowledging fault); Heatherwick and Boyle were not consulted about this.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Accolades
An end of year review chose the cauldron as one of the top five design highlights of 2012, and Heatherwick was voted the Architects' Journal architecture personality of 2012 by its readers. On 12 March 2013 it was announced that the cauldron had won the Visual Arts category of the 2012 South Bank Sky Arts Awards. The cauldron was shortlisted for the Design Museum's 'Designs of the Year 2013' Awards in the 'Product' category.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cauldron, Gallery
Sequence showing the cauldron starting to open out before it is extinguished at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes
To commemorate British gold medal winners at the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics, various post boxes in the home towns of the medal winners around the United Kingdom, plus one each on Sark and the Isle of Man, were repainted gold. It marked the first occasion in modern times that the colour of post boxes in the United Kingdom had been changed from their traditional red. Originally intended to be a temporary measure, due to the positive public response it was later decided the colour change would become a permanent tribute, with boxes additionally receiving their own special plaques.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Organisers and timeline
The project was organised by Royal Mail Group Communications in-house team, Eulogy and Blonde. Outside the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man Post and Guernsey Post also decided to emulate the Royal Mail scheme when athletes from their territories won gold (one each). The project was launched on 24 July by painting the box at Westminster Abbey, whilst the first athletes' boxes to be painted were in Lossiemouth for Heather Stanning and in Penzance for Helen Glover, to commemorate their medals in the women's coxless pair rowing.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Organisers and timeline
While initially planning to commemorate only Olympic gold medallists, on 15 August 2012, Royal Mail confirmed that gold medallists at the 2012 London Paralympics would also be similarly recognised with boxes and stamps. On 19 September 2012, the Royal Mail relented to public pressure and decided to also commemorate Northern Irish Paralympians who won gold medals while competing for Ireland, reversing their position that "the stamps and gold post boxes were specifically for gold medal winning Olympian and Paralympians who competed for Team GB." On 2 November 2012, it was announced the boxes would retain their new colour permanently, and would also receive a plaque denoting the recipient.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Colour and precedent
According to Royal Mail, the first postboxes (pillar boxes) were erected in the UK in 1853, a year after trial boxes had been erected in Jersey. They were initially painted green, to blend in with the landscape, however between 1874 and 1884 they were repainted bright red to better stand out. This has remained the standard colour, with only a few exceptions, such as blue for Air Mail in the 1930s. Also according to Royal Mail, while gold stamp schemes had been introduced before, the UK is "believed to be the first country to paint post boxes gold to celebrate Olympic and Paralympic gold medal wins".


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Locations
Each gold medallist in the 2012 games had a post box painted in recognition of their achievement, usually in their home-town.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Locations, Great Britain
Boxes were painted gold across Great Britain, as far north as Lossiemouth in Scotland, down to the near tip of South West England in Penzance, Cornwall. The actual site of boxes ranges greatly, from rural places such as village greens, to suburban high street locations such as Stratford-upon-Avon, to urban city centres.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Locations, Northern Ireland
Although athletes from Northern Ireland are eligible to compete for both Great Britain (Team GB and ParalympicsGB) and Ireland (Team Ireland and Paralympics Ireland), there were no GB gold medallists from Northern Ireland.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Locations, Northern Ireland
Due to the Royal Mail's decision to recognise Northern Irish medallists competing for Ireland, three Irish gold medal winning Paralympians were recognised with boxes in Eglinton (Jason Smyth), Glengormley (Michael McKillop) and Seaforde (Bethany Firth), although unlike the GB athletes, the multiple medallists (two each for Smyth and McKillop) did not receive multiple boxes.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Locations, Sark (Bailiwick of Guernsey)
The formerly blue post box on the island of Sark in the Bailiwick of Guernsey was painted gold by Guernsey Post to commemorate Carl Hester's team dressage success.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Locations, Isle of Man
The Isle of Man Post painted one gold box for Peter Kennaugh following success in the cycling team pursuit.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Locations, Location disputes
In some cases, the locations chosen by Royal Mail for gold boxes were disputed by either the athlete or members of the public as not being appropriate, either because the athlete was more closely associated with another location, or their home town was not as closely located as another location. In some cases, the Royal Mail attributed these errors to Team GB's athlete details database. This variously led to additional boxes being awarded, and in at least one case, a gold box being repainted red.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Recipients
The majority of boxes were awarded to individual gold medalists, whether they were competing individually or as part of a team/crew. This meant that in several cases, multiple gold medal athletes received multiple boxes in various locations. The highest number awarded was four, for the quadruple gold medallists, Sarah Storey and David Weir.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Recipients
In variation of the system of awarding one gold box per medal, there were variations on this theme (not counting instances of multiple boxes painted next to each other as a single site):


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Recipients
In one case, a box was also shared between two athletes – cyclist Craig MacLean initially received one gold box in Grantown-on-Spey, Scotland, to commemorate his single gold medal won as an able-bodied pilot in the Paralympics, while Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton also initially received one gold box in Stotfold, Bedfordshire, to commemorate her single gold medal. A third box was later painted in their home town Wilmslow, Cheshire, dedicated to both of them.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Recipients
In certain other cases, the boxes were awarded to commemorate recipients other than individual athletes:


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Recipients
The Henley box was awarded to mark the over one hundred Olympic medal winning rowers who have trained at the town's Leander Club.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Types and cyphers
The type of box painted encompasses the wide variety of types in use.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Types and cyphers
The ubiquitous cylindrical pillar box was represented by both the traditional Type A (narrow) and Type B (wide) versions, plus the newer Type K pillar boxes (both singular and in pairs). The modern square shaped pillar box, the Type G, was also painted (singles and pairs). Various types of wall box were also represented, both installed in buildings, and in self-contained pillars.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Types and cyphers
Representing the pole mounted type were two boxes of the more traditional design (Pete Reed in Watledge Road, Nailsworth and Bethany Firth in Seaforde), as well as a single example of the modern Type M (Tim Baillie, Westhill Drive North). A single example of the rare Penfold type hexagonal pillar box was also painted, for Sophie Wells in Lincoln. The Isle of Man box represents the only Type D painted gold (the D being a Type C oval but with a stamp vending machine), In one case, Nicola Adams' box in Leeds, as well as the post box, an adjacent Franked Mail Only type box was painted.


2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes, Types and cyphers
Reflecting the age range of the boxes painted, there are also a number of different Royal Cyphers, from the present Queen Elizabeth II (EIIR), to the historical versions for King Edward VII (EVIIR), King George V (G R) and Queen Victoria (V R). Also represented are Scottish boxes, which simply display the Scots Crown, and also boxes with no cypher at all.