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Rio 2016
Department_S
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Shouldn't this be the new thread title given the little amount of traffic now?
Just had an email today from London 2012 saying goodbye and passing my details over to Sport England.
Just had an email today from London 2012 saying goodbye and passing my details over to Sport England.
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I went on the free bus park tour last Saturday, quite depressing it needs a lot of imagination to see how good the park will be come the anniversary in July when parts open up to the public!
I'll ask him if he knows how they are getting on but it seems they are having difficult issues with getting the main football stadium ready for the World cup so....
What did you think?
If you look at Google Streetview now and go to the park you can see them setting up not that long before the games so you could get an interesting before and after viewpoint if you've been on that tour.
I went on the free 1hr bus tour, miserable weather but an excellent tour guide! The basketball arena is now just a frame with a roof as is the water polo arena! The Riverbank arena has obviously gone and seems to be replaced by banks of trees!
The wings of the Aquatics Centre still seem remarkably still intact, the thing I found odd was a huge mound of sand piled against the Copperbox Arena, the guide had no idea why this was
I thoroughly recommend a tour of the park, I am going back on the 4th May for the paid tour that includes a trip up the Orbit:)
What an absolutely fabulous city. Going to be an an amazing setting for the games.
But they have got a HELL of a lot to do to get the place up to scratch. Roads are full, buses are a total nightmare, metro is infrequent compared to London, trains are STUFFED full of people trying to sell things to the passengers, buying train/metro/teleferico tickets and figuring out which barrier they work in is chaos. Disabled access lifts etc are broken everywhere or completely non-existent. Supermarkets and department stores all feature massive queues and nobody working in them or smaller hotels/restaurants speaks a word of English, and the mobile networks are terrible for roaming visitors, 3G/4G is non-existent for visitors or seriously insanely expensive. Tourist sites like Corcovado are overloaded as it is. And when it rains it more like monsoons there. To top it off this week one of the stadiums in Rio has been condemned.
On the other hand, food and restaurant service there is fantastic, and despite Steve Redgrave managing to get threatened on the beach while I was there, I didn't see any significant crime or danger despite walking all over the place, and in spite of the stories of Rio crime, everyone seemed happy and I felt safer there than in some parts of London.
I really am looking forward to seeing how Rio pulls it off. They get a "dress rehearsal" of course with a couple of the World Cup 2014 matches being in Rio first.
Rio will be a great games like GB for 2 reasons, they are sport mad and have a proud national identity so in all their power want these games to succeed! They will however have their own sceptics and issues like ticket fiasco or Badminton players not playing as do all games!
Still time but they could do without the hassle.
I think a lot of people are missing the point that however good Rio turns out to be it won't be in the UK and so people 'in general' won't be anywhere near as interested in comparison to 2012. Even if we do wonderfully well it won't be the same.
I think that a lot of changes will have been made to make it better though. Proper paralympic coverage for one
I was in Atlanta for the Games in 1996 and the people were sport mad there too with a proud identity. However the experience was a nightmare because of the poor logistics of getting to the events. I missed the start of so many of them as did some competitors! Yes I am worried about transport as it is so important. I also worry about security queues. It seems queuing is prevalent there. We got it so right on transport and security queues. No other host has been as good.
Whilst the World Cup will be a good test event it won't quite duplicate what will hit them in 2016 as the WC takes place across the country and not concentrated on Rio.
Exactly. I don't think we need to be concerned about infrastructure - but political feeling may be more a worry after this week's events. They make the Mr Angries in the Mail look like big supporters.
I like London 2012
I just hope next year when the CWG and Winter Games take place we see more traffic here.
Just as Football is a sub forum London 2012 should be the/a multi-sport sub forum.
Or we could have 2,
Sub forum 2 Olympics
This sub forum for chat over major event s in the UK.
2014 - Commonwealth Games
2014- Sub 2 - Wintger Games
2015 - Rugby World Cup, Hockey Euros
2015 - Sub 2 - European Games
2016 - Sub 2 - Rio
2017 - IPC and IAAF Athletics London