Key London 2012 dates for your diary

Did you know?

• Ancient Olympics: The word gymnasium comes from the Greek root "gymnos" meaning nude (and yes, they did).
• 90% - proportion of material reclaimed from demolition within the Olympic Park which can be reused or recycled.
• The London 2012 Olympic Games ticket application process is open from 15 March to 26 April 2011.
• The London 2012 Olympic Games will have 300 medal events for 26 Olympic Sports in 34 venues over 17 days of competition.
• ATHENS 2004: The marathon races followed the same route as the 1896 race, beginning in Marathon and ending in Athens' Panathenaic Stadium. Vanderlei de Lima (BRA) was in the lead with less than 7 kilometres to go when he was pushed off the course.
• Our history with the Olympic Movement dates back to 1948 when Lloyds provided banking facilities to the 1948 Games, the last time they were held in London.
• There are 700 rooms within the Olympic Stadium, including eight changing rooms and four prayer rooms.
• TOKYO 1964: The first Fair Play prize awarded to Lars Gunnar Kall and Stig Lennart Kall, who gave up their chances of winning the regatta to help two other competitors whose boat had sunk.
• MUNICH 1972: Mark Spitz won seven gold medals and broke seven world records.
• More than one million people will visit the Olympic Stadium for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.
• If all London 2012 sports events were held on consecutive days, there would be 318 competition days for Olympic Games events and another 133 days for the Paralympic Games.
• BARCELONA 1992: In the women's 100m sprint Merlene Ottey (JAM) finished only six-hundredths of a second behind the winner, Gail Devers (USA), and yet she ended up in only fifth place.
• In 2012 up to 25,000 people could be transported to and from Stratford International Station each hour on the Javelin® train from St Pancras International station, in less than seven minutes.
• 800,000 – the number of people expected to use public transport to travel to the London 2012 Games on the busiest day: about the same number as the combined population of Cardiff and Edinburgh.
• For London 2012, rail links to the Olympic Park will have capacity to take more than 240,000 people to the Park every hour.
• Following the London 1948 Olympic Games, Lloyds was given a 1948 Torch thought to have been donated by an employee who ran with it.
• MELBOURNE / STOCKHOLM 1956: To avoid the problem of quarantine for horses, the equestrian events took place in two different cities (Stockholm and Melbourne), and in two different seasons (June and November).
• The London 2012 Paralympic Games will award 471 medal events for 20 Paralympic sports in 21 venues over 11 days of competition.
• LONDON 1908: The first time a relay was included in the athletics events.
• The London 2012 Olympic Stadium will have an 80,000 seat capacity.
• PARIS 1900: The first woman to win an Olympic event was England's Charlotte Cooper, who won the tennis singles.
• The Olympic Park is the size of 357 football pitches.
• SEOUL 1988: South Korea turned democratic in order to welcome the world to the Summer Games.
• 53m – height of the Olympic Stadium: three metres taller than Nelson’s Column in London's Trafalgar Square.
• The dining room in the London Olympic Village will be the size of three football fields and seat 5,000. It will serve an estimated 100 tonnes of meat alone.
• Around 900,000 items of sports equipment will be needed for the Olympic Games including 1424 FIFA-approved footballs, 1100 Badminton shuttlecocks and 65,000 towels.
• 35m – height of the Basketball Arena, the same as London's Tate Modern and the Falkirk Wheel
• 76 – number of lifts in the Olympic Village to ensure the buildings are fully accessible.
• There are 26 Olympic sports and 20 Paralympic sports in the London 2012 Games.
• 11 – number of residential blocks within the Olympic Village, each the size of a football pitch.
• SYDNEY 2000: Korea (South Korea) and Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) marched together under the same flag.
• A ticket application process was announced by LOCOG as a way of ensuring a fairer process in order to make London 2012 everyone’s Games.
• 8.8 million tickets will be available for the London 2012 Olympic Games, with another 2 million for the Paralympic Games.

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