Olympic flame's arrival in London ignites excitement in city
LONDON — With the flame comes the games.
After years of preparation and months of buildup, London's Olympic moment finally arrived Friday night.
Royal Marine Martyn Williams carried the Olympic torch as he
rappelled down from a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter into the Tower of
London on the shore of the River Thames. The commando's grand entrance
plunged the symbol of the games into the city's historic heart, bringing
Olympic pageantry to the British capital that last held the event in
1948.
Crowds lined the city's famed river banks to see the torch arrive,
while Yeoman warders — the ceremonial Tower guards popularly known as
Beefeaters — looked on from inside the landmark's grounds.
For Londoners, the arrival of the torch ignites a time of excitement
— as well as four weeks of extreme crowds and transport strains.
Organizers have tried to smooth the way. London Underground subway
lines are festooned with large magenta and pink signs pointing routes to
the Olympic venues. Cartoony ads with wide-eyed horses and beefy
musclemen warn commuters to remember that Olympic competitions are
taking place and to rethink their daily journeys. Barriers are being
erected to mark the special traffic lanes for Olympic vehicles —
disparagingly dubbed "Zil lanes," after the limousines granted exclusive
use of special lanes on Soviet-era highways.
Londoners who already struggle to get to work on any given weekday
aren't convinced all will be well — and haven't been shy about saying
so. The atmosphere of gloom has been segmented by the never-ending rain
and a constant stream of headlines about the failure of security
contractor G4S to provide enough guards.
The mayor has a message for the naysayers: "Put a sock in it."
"We've got an advanced case of Olympo-funk," London mayor Boris
Johnson wrote in an op-ed piece in The Sun newspaper. "We agonize about
the traffic, when our transport systems are performing well and the
world's athletes are arriving on time. ... We gnaw our fingernails about
the blinking weather, when it seems to be brightening up a bit — and
anyway, it's England in July for goodness sake and a spot of rain never
hurt anyone."
Ready or not, the games are a reality. Olympic banners in hot pink,
acid yellow and lime green have painted London in neon. The tubby
Cyclops-like mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, are dancing around central
London tourist attractions in a desperate bid to be huggable. The
city's famous red double-decker buses are sporting ads flogging the last
of the unsold Olympic soccer tickets.
The stadiums themselves are nearly ready. At the athletes village,
Cuba and Denmark have been the first to drape flags off their balconies.
The Olympic clock ticking down the days in Trafalgar Square has reached
single digits.
Olympic historian David Goldblatt, co-author of "How to Watch the
Olympics," said the flame's arrival in London marks a key turning point.
"I think it signifies the moment when everyone, whether for, against
or indifferent, is thinking 'Oh Lord let's just get the bloody thing
started,' " he said.
It was only weeks ago that celebrations marking Queen Elizabeth II's
Diamond Jubilee sent Britons into a spasm of patriotic flag waving and
"God save the Queen" singing as they watched a flotilla of 1,000 boats
on the River Thames. Will the flame's arrival inspire the famously
inhibited British to do it all again — to cheer and wave and weep and be
inspired — as the torch relay winds through the city's 33 boroughs?
Could be — if the first 62 days of the torch's travels are any indication.
The 8,000-mile (12,900 kilometer) torch relay has already been a
cultural happening across the length of Britain, drawing crowds out to
meet it wherever it goes. Spectators in rain ponchos have flash-mobbed
to its side, hoping for that once-in-a-lifetime chance to touch a bit of
history. Some have even stood by the side of the road to see the trucks
that carry the torch between cities, as it fulfills a promise to travel
within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of 95 percent of Britain's population.
"Both the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics are like carnivals or
tribal festivals," Kate Fox, the author of "Watching the English," wrote
in a British Airways survey on the games. "We behave in ways we
wouldn't normally behave — dancing in the streets and waving flags and
shouting and cheering and indulging in other wildly disinhibited acts,
such as maybe even talking to strangers."
Britons were even more committed to the flame before the last London
Olympics in 1948, when the torch was actually run in a relay from the
site of ancient Olympia in Greece. Janie Hampton, author of "London
Olympics: 1908 and 1948," said runners traveled continuously day and
night. Crowds emerged to see the 1948 flame even in the middle of the
night.
In Britain it was such a draw that police outriders had to push
people back as the flame neared the stadium to light the cauldron,
Hampton said.
"There is one event in the Games which has captured the imagination —
the carrying of the lighted torch from distant Olympia to the Stadium
at Wembley," The Times newspaper wrote on July 28, 1948. "The torch
itself, quite apart from its symbolism, is something which, like a lance
or a banner, a coat of mail or a jerkin of Lincoln green we can love
purely for its own sake. It has a somber glory."
This time the flame has been to every corner of the United Kingdom
ahead of its showcase moment at the Olympics' July 27 opening ceremony.
Friday was Day 63 of its 70-day journey, which has included travel on
boats, planes, horses and hot air balloons. It's been carried by
Olympians and Paralympians. The queen's granddaughter, Olympic
equestrian competitor Zara Phillips, has shared the honor with
84-year-old Moira Starkey, who walks with two canes and was honored for
completing a marathon last year by walking around her town hall 1,876
times to raise money for charity.
If the Beijing relay set up the 2008 Summer Games as China's
coming-out party on an international stage, London's relay has set up
Britain as the community Olympics — not flashy or dashy, not big or
spectacular, but warm and well attended.
Organizers had always assumed the world would be excited about the
games but were not sure what people in Britain would think —
particularly given that taxpayers will be paying 9.3 billion pounds
($14.7 billion) to host the event at a time of economic austerity.
There's also the fact that so much activity is focused on Olympic
Park in London. There had to be some sense that other parts of the
country were involved — that the Olympics also belonged to Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland.
But the numbers — some 9 million people have viewed the torch so far
— speak for themselves. Britain has also poured more money into
crowd-control plans for London during the Olympics after acknowledging
that it underestimated the crowds that would turn out to see the flame.
Whether they are coming just because it is a local happening, or
because people are moved by the fairy dust of the games, it's hard to
say. A torch leg features sponsor buses blaring music, streamers and
tambourines, cameras and media, cheerleaders shout "Go torchbearer!"
It's not really clear how the capital will respond to the hoopla.
This is a place where major events happen with some frequency.
But one thing is for sure. Flame = Olympics ---- News From
AOL SPORTS
