Before you keep reading, please watch Aly Raisman’s spectacular floor exercise routine to “Hava Nagila” at the 2012 London Olympics that earned her a gold medal.
Okay, I’m glad we’re all on the same page now. In case you’re wondering, I suggested you watch that because I also sent that in our class GroupMe the morning we were headed to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, site of the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics. I wanted everyone to get just as pumped as I was to see the home of the two best weeks in sports, especially for the games that were really the first Olympics I followed closely. There is no better way to get excited than watching Raisman crush it—it gets me every time.
With everyone ready to go, we were off to east London to learn more about how the city hosted the Olympics. We met up with our tour guide, Pamela, just outside a Westfield mall, and that was a purposeful meeting spot. The mall was where Pamela began explaining that none of what we currently saw was there before 2012. This massive Westfield that featured shops, restaurants and more was all part of the massive revitalization of east London that took place ahead of the Olympics. As Pamela said, the Olympics served as a “catalyst for redevelopment” for this part of town known as Stratford.
In order to get the neighborhood ready to welcome the world, basic infrastructure became the top priority. This meant improving transportation, electric grids, sewage systems and so many other facets of a city that may not come to mind to the casual observer but are crucial in order to welcome millions of tourists. Clearly, things were done well. As we paraded through the mall closer to the actual Olympic Park, it was stunning to see how busy and beautiful everything looked considering Pamela’s comments that this area used to be an industrial wasteland.
The first venue we came across in the park was the aquatics centre, which hosted all the swimming & diving events. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the water itself or enter the building, but I could feel the greatness of Missy Franklin and Michael Phelps oozing through the walls. Pamela told us that the pool is now used by local schools, as the schools in the area are some of the poorest in the country. That is one of the great ways Olympic Park is still being used even 10 years after its initial use.
Next up was getting closer to the actual Olympic Stadium. We stood near the towering ArcelorMittal Orbit that overlooks the stadium that hosted the opening and closing ceremonies along with the popular track & field events. In the present day, Olympic Stadium is now home to West Ham United of the Premier League. For all the Ted Lasso fans out there, we don’t like West Ham at the moment, but we all put our hammers up for a class picture anyway. Like the aquatics center, we didn’t enter the actual stadium, but it was great to see from the outside!
As we continued to walk around, we learned lots of neat tidbits. For example, the middle Saturday of the Olympics became known as “Super Saturday” because “Team GB” or Team Great Britain won three gold medals in 46 minutes, all in track & field. Across from Olympic Stadium, more new developments are in the works, such as a fashion school, hip hop museum and an art school. That is in edition to the recently opened University of Central London – East Campus.
It is clear that the people in charge of the 2012 Olympics had the future in mind well beyond 2012. That is very refreshing to see considering how infamous many Olympic hosts cities have become for immediately letting the facilities rot, such as in Rio De Janeiro after the 2016 Olympics. The only comparison I have for this is my visits to Atlanta, which hosted the 1996 Olympics. They have also done a good job keeping the Olympic Village area up-to-date, but all of that is in more of a commemorative way rather than an actually in-use way.
After many more steps, we arrived at the iconic Olympic rings, where we all stopped to take many pictures. It is wild how five rings can symbolize elite athleticism and the world coming together. Then we went to the one venue we did actually enter — the velodrome! I had never been inside a velodrome, which hosts indoor cycling events, so it was cool to see a building built in such a unique way to host the track inside.
A brief rain shower did nothing to stop our walk through some apartments, which just so happened to have once been the athletes’ village. Again, this was another example of taking something built for the Olympics and repurposing it for future use.
Since Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is so spread out, this day ended up providing the most walking without a doubt. Every step, however, was better than the one before it. It is hard to compare such a massive park to a single venue, but that’s what makes the Olympic Park so unique. It’s not really a venue but rather a neighborhood, and I loved discovering that the city ensured the neighborhood could thrive years after the actual Olympics.
While I would have appreciated entering the aquatics center and Olympic Stadium, this walk through the park still wound up being extremely enjoyable. In addition to a fun day, our tour served as an eye-opener. The Olympics should be used as a way to help your city, not harm it for decades. It seems to me that the 2012 London Olympics have done just that. Pamela said people think London faces a north vs south divide because of the River Thames, but in reality the divide lies between the east and the west. Thankfully, it seems the Olympics have provided a real jolt to the east as it seeks to catch up to London’s iconic West End.