The Metropolis

How should London light its Olympic flame?

Mike Pollitt | Wednesday 6 June, 2012 10:26

Beijing had a gymnast racing urgently round the stadium roof. Sydney had Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron through a wall of water. Barcelona had an archer shooting a flaming arrow across the sky. All three were potent dramatisations of their nations’ state of being: China’s ceaseless striving; Australia’s coming together from a troubled past; Spain’s innate sense of drama and, since the archer missed, of Manuelish incompetence. Don’t mind them, they’re from Barcelona.

London’s options appear to be thin on the ground. In order to capture the polite self-deprecation of our traditional national character, the ceremony should really begin with a nameless administrator in a suit casually ambling up to the cauldron, fumbling in his pocket then turning to the crowd to say “I’m terribly sorry, does anyone have a lighter?”.

But that wouldn’t hit any YouTube shareability targets, so something grander is required. And, living as we do in the austerest of times, surely using material already in place is the way to go. You might think that the missiles which are planned for the common at Blackheath and atop blocks of flats in Bow and Waltham Forest are a bit of an Olympic fun-blocker. It’s a fear the authorities share. In the immortal words of Col. John Campbell, one of the military men responsible for the missiles, “we’re trying to de-militarise this and let the sport do the talking.” But while a de-militarised Olympics might sound superficially attractive, it misses a great opportunity.

Because just imagine the fun when a missile, packed not with explosives but with the Olympic flame itself, is fired with pinpoint accuracy into the heart of the cauldron, and the London 2012 Olympic Games begin with a bang!

Picture the spectacle, it’s made for TV. Start with a close up of the soldiers placing the sacred Olympic missile carefully into the launcher. Cut to expectant faces in the stadium crowd. Cue helicopter shots of the missile leaving the launcher and arching toward its target, and cue Elgar to accompany the ecstatic climax as the cauldron bursts into flame, and the Games of the 30th Olympiad get officially underway.

This may seem far-fetched. But then the Olympics have a habit of throwing perspective out of the window.

For not only do the games have their own military hardware, they have their own territory to go with it. Aside from the sites at Stratford, Woolwich and elsewhere, there’s Leyton Marsh, where a temporary basketball training complex is currently going up on Metropolitan Open Land. That’s public land, to you and me, upon which any building is supposed to be tightly controlled. The loud protests of local people who thought the land belonged to them have been ignored.

And the Olympics have their own law, the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006. This is the legislation demanded by the IOC when London was awarded the games, and it’s this law which might restrict you from entering the stadium with a political statement on your T-shirt, and stops corner shops putting Olympic rings in their windows in case Coca Cola gets upset. To aid the drafting of this law, the IOC helpfully sent the government a document setting out their “Requirements on Brand Protection” which included the following thought:
bq. “…the burden of proof could possibly be reversed so that the defendant is presumed to have violated the law by using such signs and identifications, unless he can show that his actions have not created a link to the Games”.

In other words: guilty until proven innocent! Thankfully this was one IOC requirement which didn’t make it into British law. Which is just as well seeing as it would have undermined hundreds of years of thinking about the most basic human rights.
So the Olympics have their own weapons, their own land, and their own law. Throw in their own language (the O2 translates into North Greenwich Arena, sponsors translate into partners) and you might be forgiven for thinking the Olympics amount to a state all of their own. And an unpleasantly authoritarian state at that.

If all this sounds like churlish griping, it is. From the moment that missile crashes into the cauldron and the Olympics get underway, I’ll enjoy watching the events and supporting the athletes.But I don’t believe that these games belong to the people, or the athletes, or the city. We belong to them.

Follow Mike
Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com


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