With the IOC in London for final inspection of facilities, five areas of concern keep Olympic organisers awake at night
London 2012 organisers and the prime minister, David Cameron, will on Wednesday welcome the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, and the chair of the IOC coordination commission, Denis Oswald, to a No10 reception to mark their 10th and final inspection visit.
On one of its earliest visits Oswald awarded London's preparations "nine and three-quarters out of 10". And last July, with a year to go until the opening ceremony, Rogge told the Guardian that London was the best prepared of any Games city in history. So there are unlikely to be anything other than warm words when they meet.
But, for all the plaudits and occasional brickbats that have come the way of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games so far, Locog is now entering its most mission-critical phase. Here we outline five specific challenges that are most exercising a rapidly expanding staff that will reach 6,000 by Games time, in addition to the 70,000 volunteers, and will make or break the London Olympics.
The opening weekend
The climactic two days of the torch relay, leading into the opening ceremony and the first weekend of action ? which includes the men's and women's cycling road races that require closure all along routes of 156 and 87 miles ? are exercising Locog, Transport for London and government officials. There is believed to be concern at the logistics of the final two days of the torch relay, which are likely to require major bridges and roads to be closed as the flame makes its way around central London and up the Thames in time for the opening ceremony.
With an estimated 120 heads of state also to be transported to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony and major events in Hyde Park for up to 80,000 people on both the evening of 26 July (to mark the torch's arrival in central London and headlined by Dizzee Rascal) and 27 July (to mark the opening ceremony), all agree it is the most concerted test of the city's logistics of the entire Games period.
Organisers are desperate for the opening ceremony to pass off without incident and set the tone for the rest of the Games, aware of the complication that it will be brand new to everyone. Much of the fine detail of the planning still needs to be done and will be necessarily last-minute.
The final ticket stampede
The sale of the final batch of 1.2m tickets (apart from more than 1m remaining football tickets and several hundred thousand likely to be sold at public box offices as venue configurations are finalised) is a huge test for Locog. More so than any other the emotive issue of ticket sales has the potential to be an ongoing achilles heel for organisers.
In one sense ticket sales have been phenomenally successful, with more than 7m of the 10.8m available across the Olympics and Paralympics already sold and revenue targets all but met. But Locog's refusal to give a rolling update on how many remain in each price category at every venue has fuelled suspicion.
Issues with Ticketmaster's technology and a perceived lack of transparency have not left potential purchasers predisposed to give organisers the benefit of the doubt. And given the Locog rhetoric around inclusiveness and diversity, getting the ticketing right has always been vital. Some frustration is inevitable, as the 1.2m people who failed in the first ballot chase the remaining tickets as they are put on sale on a sport-by-sport basis over five days, but Locog's task will be to avoid it boiling over amid intense media interest in the final week of April.
Install temporary venues
More so than any other Games the London 2012 vision of a "compact" Olympics, leaving behind no white elephants, heaps pressure on to the end of the process.
Perceptions of the build-up to the Games have been aided by the successful completion of the �7.1bn worth of permanent venues in plenty of time. But the big task of installing 200,000 temporary seats in locations as diverse as Horse Guards Parade (beach volleyball), Greenwich Park (equestrian) and the Olympic Park itself (hockey) has only just begun.
Given the difficult locations, the fine margins and the small timeframes involved, the �35m "overlay" that needs to be constructed around those temporary venues remains one of the most problematic tasks facing organisers.
Dow and other sponsors
Locog executives had hoped that by now the noise around their decision to award Dow the contract to sponsor the �7m wrap that will surround the stadium at Games time would have dwindled to nothing. That has not happened, though neither has it reached a definitive climax.
Instead the negative drip, drip of criticism from those who insist Dow has ongoing liabilities relating to the 1984 Bhopal disaster ? and the equally loud rebuttals from the company itself ? threaten to taint the tone of the Games.
The IOC, which has its own $100m sponsorship deal with Dow, and the prime minister, have weighed in squarely behind Locog. But the issue will not go away and, for critics of the Games, it will play into more general themes about the uneasy alliance of big business and Olympic values. For Locog the danger is that it also undermines its own message about this being a sustainable Games with a lasting legacy.
Balanced budget
There has been widespread criticism of the extent to which Locog's enlarged budget now includes items funded by the taxpayer ? the hugely enlarged security budget, a �40m top-up to the ceremonies budget and so on ? and the extent to which items have moved in and out of its balance sheet.
The only way for Locog to counter that criticism has been to insist that the new money is for tasks it was not originally due to perform and that, as promised, it will balance its own �2bn budget privately raised from sponsorship and tickets. Locog's chief executive, Paul Deighton, has admitted before a parliamentary committee that it is operating with perhaps only �5m of headroom. A true evaluation of whether the organising committee has delivered value for money will not be possible until well after the closing ceremony. Locog's final accounts will not be published until after the Games.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/mar/27/london-2012-checklist-olympics
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