London Olympic Preps Underway

Monday (27th July, 2009) marked exactly three years to the day that London will launch the 2012 Olympics.

And with transport infrastructure being a key concern it was no surprise that the occasion was marked by the launch of a high speed train servicing the Olympic site. 

The ‚Javelin Train‘ covered the three mile journey from central London in just under seven minutes – considerably faster than existing links. 

On board for Monday’s so-called ‚time trial‘ was London 2012 chief, Lord Sebastian Coe, Mayor of London Boris Johnson and a host of British Olympic hopefuls, including teenage diving sensation Tom Daley.

The Olympic site itself is starting to take shape.

The Olympic Stadium’s outer shell is complete and other sporting arenas, like the velodrome and aquatics center, are well on schedule.

Speaking from inside the Olympic stadium, Lord Coe seemed confident the main stadium will be completed ahead of time.

[Sebastian Coe, London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games]:
„A year and a half ago you would have seen a flat area of land that had been cleared and remediated. Now we’ve got virtually a stadium in two years time we will have it completed. So this is an extraordinary piece of project management slightly ahead of schedule which is exactly where we want to be. We need to get into the venue as quickly as we can to be able to test it to make sure it works in games time.“

London was awarded the honor of hosting the 2012 Olympics in 2005.

Team GB will be hoping it’s Beijing medal tally that saw them placed fourth in the medal table will be a sign of good things to come for British sport.

(NTDTV)