JOHNNY WATTERSONmarvels at the interface between the idealism and the consumerism of the London Games
THE DLR is the light rail track that takes fans into Olympic Park in the east end of London and disgorges them into Westfield, a sprawl of shops adjacent to the athletes’ village and nightmarishly billed as “Europe’s largest urban shopping mall”. There is a Formula One car in the window of a telephone shop. Armani. Dorothy Perkins, GAP, Hugo Boss, they are all there. There is a Holiday Inn and a Premier Inn and five banks.
Towering over one side of the shopping area, the athletes’ village is festooned with flags and emblems, a reminder to those on retail therapy this will be the centre of the world for almost three weeks.
The mesh of twisted metal of the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a 115-metre-high observation tower, can be seen by the Olympic Stadium. Loose change of around £20 million from steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal delivered Britain’s largest piece of public art. London Olympic organisers (LOCOG) deny it was a fabulous vanity project. The billionaire and his son Aditya will carry the Olympic torch this week.
In the village, the Great Britain team have an entire block of apartments covered with Union Jacks from top to floor. Opposite them are the Australians in a tower of green and gold. Turkey is further on, while Belgium’s black and yellow trails down seven stories. One lone room has a green flag tied to the balcony and, assuming it’s not ironic, it reads “Peace and Love for all”.
In the week of the Olympic Games opening ceremony one thing has distinguished the character of Olympism in 2012 and that is the peace and love of the athletes comes via a delivery system of the biggest sprawl of consumerism in Europe. If you want the athlete from an African country living her dream, you drink Coca-Cola and you shop in Westfield with Visa.
The interface of the idealistic and the Olympic Games cash machine is a sleight of hand the IOC has again brilliantly executed this week. For the last few days London 2012 has been selling romanticism and struggle, slices of dull and difficult lives with a five-ringed silver lining.
Just yesterday the 30-year-old boxer Mihaela Lacatus, against whom Katie Taylor received a walkover at the World Championships in China this year, was breathlessly quoted and flashed out to the world’s press.
“Boxing is my life. It is everything,” said the lightweight. “I left my family. I left everything for boxing for 15 years. It is my dream to be at the Olympic Games and I hope I win. I left (boxing) to have a baby (Sara Maria). She is beautiful.”
Mihaela is not alone. The Kenyan boxers who hope to promote women’s issues in their country. The downtrodden Ghana team, the women from Saudi Arabia, the boxer from Afghanistan. Some years ago it would have been Ireland’s Francis Barrett, the first from the Travelling community.
For the IOC, revenue from television income for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics is expected to exceed €3.3 billion. IOC president Jacques Rogge told his members the IOC’s finances are “strong and safe”.
Television income from the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and London 2012 is €3.23 billion. The €4 billion mark will be reached at Rio 2016.
US broadcasters NBC paid a record €3.63 billion for the rights until 2020. Olympic top sponsors are set to dish out €800 million billion for the first time until 2016.
Rogge said €600 million had already been generated for the period 2017-2020.
Like other high-digit concepts, the speed of light or the size of Mr Mittal’s annual income, they become meaningless as decimal points keep shifting.
But this week in London and around Westfield and the athletes’ village and among the British soldiers doing the gate security the uncomplicated messages are as strong as Rogge’s financial address in London’s The Royal Opera House on Tuesday evening.
The noble, callow, worthy, chaste impulse of the green flag draped from a balcony keeps the important Olympic fire burning. There’s dollars in dreams. No amount of drug cheats or high octane corporate billions can seem to hurt that.
