ABSTRACT
The London 2012 Summer Olympics were born out of failure. First came the failure of preceding English cities, Birmingham (1992) and Manchester (1996 and 2000), to bid successfully for this mega-event. The accumulating support for London was therefore fuelled by the realization that only the capital had the capacity, capability and cachet to compete on a world stage. Secondly, a more domestic failure also stalked London 2012; the ill-fated Millennium Festival centred on the Millennium Dome in London’s Greenwich peninsula, which was perceived to be a failure in terms of confused purpose and content, high cost, lower-than-predicted visitor numbers, and critically, the legacy of the iconic building itself (Evans, 1996a). Could London do it better this time – in spectator numbers, experience, media opinion, cost and legacy uses? On Wednesday 6 July 2005, the International Olympic Committee’s meeting in Singapore voted to award the 2012 Summer Olympics to London. The decision represented a combination of Eurovisionstyle partisanship, tactical voting,global schmoozing, and notably the failure of its direct competitors and the long-term favourites.1 London’s coup de theatre was a multicultural-faced group of excited East End children in contrast to the sombresuited Parisian messieurs. These failures have therefore informed the strategy for the London 2012 Games and shaped the narratives which accompanied it across changing political regimes.
