It’s almost unbelievable that 2012 has practically arrived and the countdown to the London Games is currently only 7 months long. The Royal Mail is celebrating this milestone in the grand style with the launch on 5 January of first class stamps with the Olympic and Paralympic logos on them. Apparently, it’s the first time that a commercial logo has featured on this type of stamp, so you can be sure that collectors will be queuing up to buy the earliest issues.

While looking at the Royal Mail website for details I took a closer look at the series of brightly coloured stamps featuring Olympic & Paralympic sports which have already appeared, and very attractive they are too! There will be 30 of these in all, and each has been designed by a different artist. I particularly like Matthew Hollings’ wheelchair rugby stamp, but every one of them is fascinating in its use of colour, imagery and its take on the sport it portrays. You can see all of them on the Telegraph’s website: http://tgr.ph/qtooir

Art and design has always had its place at the Olympic Games. The earliest of the revived Olympics had prizes for art, literature and so on, and these were not considered in any way inferior to the sporting events. In the end (1948 was the last Olympics to include such competitions) sport became the main focus, but the idea of a cultural side to the Games remained and is now gaining greater emphasis; nowhere more than at London 2012 where famous artists like Tracy Emin have already produced Olympic posters, and the Olympic Park has its own artist in residence (Neville Gabie) whose role is to encourage artist-led projects on the site, aided by the site work force and local communities.

Even the architecture of the site incorporates art. Along the fence of one of the buildings is a work by Carsten Nicolai which sees the Olympic rings transformed into a coloured image of a low frequency oscillation sound wave, and Monica Bonvicini has designed 9 metre tall letters forming the word ‘run’ for the handball arena. These act as mirrors in the daytime and at night turn into glowing shapes. Even the flower beds have a function as works of art in the form of the Fantasticology project which will see complex planting designs for wild flower areas. And what is more, over all of this stands Anish Kapoor’s Mittal Tower.

It all makes sense. Sport lends itself to artistic depiction (see the references below) but the Olympic Park has also incidentally provided a huge number of spaces, shapes and geometric planes of all kinds. Why not ornament them with works of art, given its wide popular appeal (and especially that of modern art) in the UK? Art isn’t necessarily a luxurious add-on to the main event; it should be embedded in our domestic and public lives. William Morris famously suggested that you should “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” and he of course was born in Walthamstow, not that far from the Olympic Park at Stratford.

References

Australian Gallery of Sport. The Olympic collections at the Australian Gallery of Sport. Melbourne, Australia Australian Gallery of Sport and Olympic Museum, [2002?])

London reference collections shelfmark: YD.2010.a.5223

Wingfield, Mary Ann. Sport and the artist. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club, 1988.

London reference collections shelfmark: YV.1989.b.399

Victoria and Albert Museum. Illustrations from the XIVth Olympiad Sport in Art Exhibition, London, 1948. Held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. London, [1952]

London reference collections shelfmark: 7812.ee.20.

 

 

Simone Bacchini writes:

The recent publication by the National Audit Office (NAO) of a progress report on the preparation for the summer Olympics and Paralympics has been much commented in the press.

 

As the body responsible for scrutinising public expenditure on behalf of Parliament, the NAO has been carrying out—at regular intervals—audits on the progress made in the preparation for the Games. Basically, its main task is to verify that work for London 2012 is proceeding according to plans—on time and within budget—and that the taxpayer is getting value for money. It caused some outrage.

 

Overall, work is proceeding well. NAO found that the Olympic Delivery Authority—responsible for the construction of new venues and infrastructures—is on track to deliver its work on the Olympic Park on time, to the required standards, and, most importantly, on budget. Still, this won’t be a cheap affair with an estimated final delivery cost of £6,856 million. And the figure does not include £333 million to transform the Olympic Park after the Games.

 

So, what caused the outrage? Well, for a start there are Transport for London and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), which is the liaison point for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the preparation for the Games, responsible for staging the Games. According to NAO’s report, they have not yet developed fully integrated plans for the Olympic Route Network with local area transport plans. Until this is done, we will not know the full impact that the modified and increased demands on London’s transport system will have for businesses and individuals. I would venture to say that in reality we won’t know what the full impact will be until after the Games.

 

However, what really caught some commentators’ attention were the rising costs of security, mainly owing to poor planning. Initially, LOCOG estimated that around 10,000 guards would be needed to guarantee venue security. The estimated cost was £282 million. But when the venues were completed, the estimate was revised. All of a sudden, it appeared that 23,700 guards would be needed, bringing the cost of the security operation to an estimated £553 million. This amounts to a doubling of the cost, which in turn will mean more public expenditure. In other words: we—the taxpayer—will have to pay more.

 

Getting an estimate wrong by 50 per cent is certainly a lot. Personally, I lack the expertise to say what should have been done to get it right in the first place. My guess is that most of the public do too, including some of the journalists who were so incensed by the new figures.

 

Whenever public money is involved, it only right that expenses be scrutinised and criticises, where necessary. However, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps all the talk of values, legacy, and the symbolism that surround the Olympics hasn’t perhaps blinded us to one incontrovertible fact: the modern Games is a colossal event, a gigantic machine that—once it’s set in motion—is impossible to stop.

 

Athletes do not take competing lightly; their careers might be relatively short but for their duration they know the training will have to be relentless, their attention focussed, and all else will have to take second place. All this requires psychological—as much as physical—preparation. I wonder if we ought to accept the same frame of mind for host countries too.

Much to my surprise - given these straightened times - the Prime Minister has recently announced that the budget for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies is being more than doubled from £40 million to £81 million. According to the BBC’s sports correspondent James Pearce, this unexpected windfall comes from savings made from the public expenditure budget for the Games. Apparently, funding for the ceremonies would usually come from LOCOG’s private budget (i.e., from ticket revenue, sponsorship and the IOC itself).

 Who pays for what is invariably a hot topic where the Olympics and Paralympics are concerned. Those opposed to the staging of the Games invariably find fault with the amount spent from the public purse on the Games infrastructure, and also with the sponsorship deals and the restrictions that hedge them round about, so there is generally plenty of mileage in funding controversies. This revelation though, that the UK government will be pitching in for the ceremonies, raises some interesting issues.

 Such as: presumably the ceremonies have a fairly similar budget allocation at each Games (if just funded by the OCOGs); therefore a government wishing to host an extra stunning spectacle has to make a pretty hefty contribution over and above the dedicated amount. The Beijing authorities, one assumes, must have pumped in vast amounts of funding to achieve their own mind boggling ceremonies in 2008 which were clearly intended to astonish the world with mammoth displays of son et lumiere and examples of human discipline, planning and physical agility. Whatever your feelings about the vaingloriousness of all this, such Olympic ‘rituals’ clearly can’t be characterised as simply irrelevant add-ons; they are obviously invested with a significance all their own.

 However, this isn’t what we expected from London 2012. Isn’t it being spoken of in some quarters as the ‘austerity’ Olympics, and haven’t we backed off from trying to emulate the Chinese? After all, nations – particularly the poorer ones - can’t keep on upping the ante in this way. Or do we have no choice but to do so?

 Despite such pious hopes, the fear now is that a run-of-the-mill ceremony is not going to do GB Ltd any favours. The current financial meltdown is partly about confidence (or the lack of it) and the PM’s stated aim in bringing more money to the party is to maximise the country’s business and tourism legacy by adding all the glitz needed to impress the watching world. We have to show ourselves to be efficient, imaginative, talented, decorative and fun. There’s really no way round it. A couple of jugglers and some fireworks will not meet the world’s enhanced expectations.

 So we find ourselves in a very difficult situation. It might seem shallow to sprinkle on some more fairy dust, but perhaps it’s a case of not spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar.

Quite by chance I came across a marvellous book by John Bale called 'Running cultures’ which looks at running from a variety of unusual perspectives – from those of geography, time and space; and also from that of runners as ‘transgressors’ and ‘cosmopolites’. In short, it's an imaginative deconstruction of the art of putting one foot in front of the other.

 One particular section debates the interesting and controversial concept of ‘athletes as pets’. This reading is based on the humanistic-geographical writing of the Chinese-American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, and it considers the way in which society can force elite athletes into behaviour that is not natural to them. The coach-athlete relationship in particular is seen as a paradigm, raising issues of paternalism and control, with its inevitable imposition of discipline and conformity to the achieving of goals. Tuan suggests that this is done in much the same way as animals and children are ‘trained’.

 When taken to extremes: when diet, training, thought and personal regime become strictly regulated, the ‘natural’ body, Bales suggests, “disappears, and its ownership becomes ambiguous. The power of the coach, buttressed by medical scientists and by the ideology of achievement sport, converts the athlete into a pet”

 Athletes can easily lose ‘control’ of their bodies, sometimes in the most drastic and irretrievable of ways. A few  years ago Andreas Krieger, formerly Heidi Krieger - the 1986 women’s shot-put champion – spoke of the anabolic steroids which were given to him by East Germany’s sports officials and doctors, with the result that after his competitive career was over he had no choice but to change sex. There have been numerous other such examples driven by the same ideologies in which the athlete becomes a commodity linked to the advancement of a political creed; or bears the weight of responsibility for upholding the nation’s glory and prowess. In extreme cases he or she may be lied to about the long term effects of the latest medical wizardry; or alternately threatened or cajoled, often in very subtle, but still effective, ways. In striving for excellence the athletes are deemed to have handed themselves over to those who purport to know better.

 A healthy coach-athlete relationship is obviously key to the athlete’s well-being both in the short and the long term. Both parties must make a contract between adults, which enables each of them to freely make choices: the athlete to acknowledge training demands based on logical and informed ideas; the coach to be aware of, to listen to and answer the athlete’s needs, to treat him or her as a rational (and not an infantilised) partner. 

 Reference

John Bale

Running cultures: racing in time and space. London: Routledge, 2004

London reference collections shelfmark: YK.2006.a.18903

DS shelfmark: m04/23290

 

 

 

Simone Bacchini writes:

 

“To the average young man there is no subject quite so fascinating as a discussion of physical strength.” These are the opening words of Secrets of Strength, by Earle E. Liederman. I was going to say that if Liederman is right, then I’m not ‘average’ but as I’m no longer a ‘young man’ it doesn’t really matter.

 

But who was Earle Liederman? I’m sure I’m not the only one who has not heard of him. Even the mighty internet isn’t very helpful; and what it has is in part contradictory. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, he was born—the son of Swedish immigrants—in New York, some sources say in 1910, others 1926. However, he soon shot to fame when he gave up his medical education to become a ‘Strong Man’.

 

Strong Men were what we would call culturists, or body-builders. They made a living from taking part in competitions and exhibiting their muscular bodies in theatres and other venues, apparently attracting large crowds.

 

Earle, however, went one step further. Sensing that there was a market for physical self-improvement, he authored several books on how to develop a strong, muscular body. His books, which later included titles on sexuality (e.g. Sex Dynamite; The Hidden Truth About Sex) sold very well in America and abroad. I have copies of ‘Muscle Building’ and ‘Secret of Strength’ on my desk (the opening quotation is from the latter) that were published in Britain, in 1938. Advertised in the popular press, the books were bought and sold by post, making Liederman’s programme a great success story in the world of postal marketing.

 

In Britain, we had our own ‘Super Man’: Olympic middleweight champion Harold Laurance. He too had a training programme: ‘The World Beater Course’, and an illustrated book, presumably to whet his potential audience’s appetite for big muscles, suggestively named ‘Supermanity’. Laurance’s course promised to ‘transform a puny, sallow, nervous lad of from 15 to 20 into a strong, active, clear-eyed, self-confident man.’

 

Today, a visit to any newsagent’s will reveal the numerous magazines, aimed mostly at a male audience, which month after month advertise various programmes to help readers acquire the perfect ‘beach-body’. Similarly, a gym membership seems to be de rigueur for any self-respecting twenty-first century male. But I had always assumed that the current mass obsession with the body beautiful was a rather recent phenomenon; a fruit of the affluent post-war years in the West, but apparently it has a longer history.

 

However, there are differences as well as similarities between these early programmes and their contemporary descendants. To begin with, they are both aimed at large audiences and make use of the popular media: the press, the internet, and—to a lesser extent—TV. And it couldn’t be otherwise, since the message they convey is heavily reliant on images. Their aim is first to visually stimulate the viewer, convincing him that what he’s seeing is not only highly desirable but also, crucially, attainable.

 

Back in the Thirties, the focus of the message seems to have been more skewed towards the acquisition of ‘strength’. Other desirable outcomes would have been better health; and last, but not least (if you read carefully), success with the opposite sex. Nowadays, the stress seems to have shifted unashamedly to ‘looking good’, with well-being as a by product. In this respect, both the male and the female body receive equal attention for their aesthetic value. It is now acceptable, it seems, for men to be looked at because they are beautiful as well as strong.

 

Body builders are adamant that their ‘craft’ is in fact a sport, and attempts have been made to make the discipline an Olympic event, so far without success. Are ideas about ‘narcissism’ contributing to the IOC’s intransigence? 

 

Representations of strong men vary over time: bulky men wearing improbable leotards, or strategically-placed leaves, and gladiator sandals in the old pictures; and shiny alpha males in designer gear in the contemporary ones. Yet, although the accoutrements of physical prowess may have changed, it looks like all the books, magazines, and leaflets promising readers bigger limbs appeal to the one constant of men’s sporting endeavours: vanity. Plus ça change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

 

Liederman, E.E. Muscle Building. Manchester: Universal Institute of Physical Culture, 1938.

London reference collections shelfmark: Shelfmark: 7393.bb.17

 

Liederman, E.E. Secrets of Strength. Manchester: Universal Institute of Physical Culture. 1938.

London reference collections shelfmark: Shelfmark: 7393.bb.15

 

Radley, A.. The Illustrated History of Physical culture, Vol. 1. Blackpool: Radley, 2001.

London reference collection shelfmark: YC.2001.b.730

 

Thompson, J.K. and Cafri, G. (eds.) The Muscular Ideal: Psychological, social, and Medical Perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007.

DS shelfmark: m07/.27303.

 

Picture Post, 12/11/1938

London reference collection shelfmark: P.P.7000.af (also available as electronic resource).

 

My imagination was fired (!) by reports in the media that in the case of attack, ground-to-air missiles will be deployed to protect the 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games venues. Reading this immediately conjured up a vision of Usain Bolt breaking the 100m WR in the Olympic stadium while a series of heat seeking rockets head skywards from somewhere very close by: a neat mixture , one might say, of Independence Day and Chariots of Fire - both record-breaking films too in their day. (One of the more facetious of my colleagues has just suggested that Wenlock and Mandeville feature on the missiles but we’ll draw a veil over that).

 It’s obviously no joke though, if security measures such as these are being envisaged, and if the United States team is indeed bringing with it something like 1000 protective agents, including 500 from the FBI (according to the Guardian 14-11.11). More surprising to me is that as early as 1996, surface to air missiles were available for use at Atlanta (ie pre 9/11), and the Beijing authorities were also ready to use weapons of this kind to maintain the safety of athletes and spectators in 2008.

 As events have proved, there are practically no limits to what terrorism can achieve - it’s a hydra headed monster, and therein lies its strength. Security forces nowadays are consequently obliged to guard against a huge range of potential threats, from the very smallest incidents like hoax bomb scares to full on military assaults, with the possibility of a missile launch in retaliation. One of the most insidious threats though is something that military hardware won’t be able to resolve and that’s the possibility of cyber attacks.

 The BBC reported in October that computer experts will be running a series of tests on the Games computer systems early next year in order to see how they would cope with a major cyber attack at Games time. Apparently China suffered almost 12 million per day during the Beijing Games, and a number of high profile organisations – including the IOC – have been hit by malware. It’s not surprising that terrorists seek out mega events and organisations as targets. Why wouldn’t they, given the PR impact?

 It is impossible to estimate at this point just how much the total bill for security will be, but efforts to combat all these threats will reap some rewards in advancing our understanding of how to manage the security of mega events, from their computer systems to public safety.

References 

London 2012: a safe and secure Games for all.

[London] : Home Office, c2011.

London reference collections shelfmark: OPA.2011.x.686

 

 

Simone Bacchini writes:

When I read the news my interest was raised. As I learned of the details of the route I got excited. And when my colleague sent me the link to the official promotional clip, I confess, I was totally taken by it.

I’m no fool: I know that, like everything else surrounding official aspects of the modern Games, this Olympic Torch Relay too is part of a carefully crafted plan at the heart of which lie immense economic interests, and not only a “love of sports”. I know as well that the image of Britain it aims to offer is one studied to showcase the most appealing, uncontroversial views of this country. Sebastian Coe, quoted in the Independent newspaper, said that he “hoped the relay would provoke a similar reaction to this year’s royal wedding”, another highly-staged, somewhat “artificial” but feel-good event, one might argue. Well, I truly hope it will.

These are difficult, often depressing times. The continuing financial crisis has left many of us disheartened about the present and worried about the future. Last summer, social unrest brought scenes to our streets that we would have preferred not to have seen. In the coming weeks, months, possibly years, there will be plenty of opportunities to reflect on what went wrong. But we do also need a bit of respite and some cheering up.

The 8,000-mile Torch Relay will go through every county in the UK. It will visit 1,018 of our beautiful towns, cities, and villages. It will pass through spectacular scenery, like the summit of Mount Snowdon in Wales; the quasi-surreal Giants’ Causeway, in Northern Ireland; and the somewhat otherworldly landscape of the Shetlands, off the coast of Scotland.

And it’s not only the country’s natural environment that the light of the Olympic Torch will shine upon. Its path will remind us and the world of past and present British achievements in the arts - like Gormley’s majestic Angel of the North and the megaliths at Stonehenge. And of the ingenuity of British architects, exemplified by steel and iron bridges across the country, the Eden Project in Cornwall, and the Lovell Telescope, one of the biggest radio telescopes in the world. If well-attended, the Relay will also show Britain’s greatest asset: its people, united in joyful and celebratory mood.

Of course, once the big Olympic tent will have been picked up and folded away, ready to be sent to Rio, Britain will still have to deal with many of the same old problems - just like Greece, that other mythical place from which the Olympic Torch will begin its journey. But quite apart from any talk of “legacy” (only the future will tell), the Games is a mighty spectacle, perhaps the biggest show on earth. Isn’t the main purpose of any show, first and foremost, to entertain by offering an escape, albeit temporary, into other worlds? So, well done, Olympics; and what a great idea this Olympic Torch journey.

Anish Kapoor’s Olympic Orbit tower (properly called the ArcelorMittal Orbit) had its final steel ring attached to it last week -  amidst much fanfare -  and as a big fan of Anish Kapoor I pored over all the pictures (I took one myself when it was first being built – see below).

 

I ask myself whether this tower will be the iconic image for London 2012, just as the Bird’s Nest was in Beijing, but this remains to be seen, as icons clearly have a life, and a resonance of their own, and every observer has a different perspective. Looking back over the Olympic Games of yesteryear my image of Barcelona is of the diving competitors somersaulting from the diving board against a backdrop of the city of Barcelona itself and looking as if they were jumping from at least two miles up in the air. There’s a much sadder one from Munich 1972 of course: that of a hooded terrorist on the balcony of the room where the Israeli athletes were being held hostage.

It’s whatever strikes you as memorable that becomes an icon, I guess.

Iconic structures do have a head start on other aspects of the Games though, and the ‘altius’ part of the Olympic motto frequently finds an echo in extravagant and even surreal architecture. Sometimes the stadiums themselves are iconic, but often stand-alone features like towers and art works win the day. People love high, visible structures like the Skylon from the 1951 Festival of Britain (now equalled and probably surpassed in its popularity by its successor the London Eye).

The Orbit is 376 ft tall, 35 stories high, and has a central staircase which spirals down through its core. It sounds like the perfect location for those stair climbing marathons which are attracting the super-fit at the moment, but you need to take a lift to the top; though you are allowed to walk down if you choose.

And it’s not alone in utilising the seductive appeal of the tower. The Franco-British exhibition at White City in 1908, which incorporated the Olympic Games of that year, had the famous ‘flip-flap’: which was both a ride and a viewing device combined. The website ‘Winning Endeavours’ shows a newspaper picture of it:

 http://bit.ly/rqTctU

Other host cities had similar lofty structures. The Munich Games of 1972 had a wonderful tower which was (still is!) 190 meters high, and gives great views of the city and the Alps in the distance. It stands as a benign legacy of these Games, and as a much loved landmark. The Berlin Games of 1936 on the other hand managed to fit not one but three towers into its building project. The twin towers by the entrance to the stadium stand 156 feet high, and resemble brick stacks, very square and uncompromising. From a certain perspective they framed (but were actually dwarfed by) the Olympic Bell tower at 247 ft high which held the Olympic bell weighing 30,450 lbs.

Other curiosities: Montreal 2004 certainly had the quirkiest tower. Forming part of the Olympic stadium, it is said to be the largest leaning tower in the world. It looks positively Dali-esque, and may not be the ideal location for those suffering from vertigo. Rio has an even more astonishing idea for a tower (which is currently competing with other concepts for acceptance). See this webpage:

http://bit.ly/rJFFYE

Whatever your inclination, the vertically challenged (this includes me) can stand at the foot of these towers and gaze optimistically skywards; which is what the Olympics and Paralympics are all about, really.