Toot, toot beep, beep its 98 days and counting until London proudly hosts the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012! In all honesty I have not really taken on everything around its preparation or organisation until recently, but now the excitement is beginning to catch on big time. After reading the London Evening Standard’s ‘100 things you need to know about the 2012 Olympics’ I am slightly more in tune with what’s going on, and am keen to support and spectate my tush off...pfffft to the chance of blagging tickets this late in the game I know, but I will certainly be a jubilant lil lady celebrating our wins and wonderful athletes. Below are the facts that grabbed my beady blinkers in the article, bet you didn’t know either!!
The Olympic rings logo was designed by French historian Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Each ring represents a continent. Every national flag in the world includes one of the five colours.
There are 10.8 million ticket holders to the Olympics and Paralympics.
At the 1900 Paris Olympics the winners received paintings instead of gold medals because the French believed they were more valuable.
Women first competed in the Olympics at the 1900 Paris games, in croquet, tennis, sailing, golf and equestrian events.
(What!!!??? We got far more muscle than that, as has been proven!)
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei have never sent a female athlete to an Olympics.
(Too outrageous to comment...but this is not sporting or any kind of etiquette)
The first published use of the word Olympian in the English language was in 1590, in William Shakespeare’s Henry VI.
(I LOVE this fact!! #EnglishLiteratureIsMyLife)
London also hosted the Olympics in 1908 and 1948.
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has written a specially commissioned London 2012 poem, Eton Manor, which she read out in March at the sports club that inspired the poem.
This year’s Games will be the single largest movement of people after the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Olympic stadium holds 80,000 people.
The three-hour opening ceremony on July 27 is expected to attract even more than the one billion viewers who watched the opening at Beijing 2008.
200,000 people will work at the Olympics.
Fran Halsall, 21, is the only British female swimmer to have qualified for five events at the Games — the 50m and 100m freestyle, 100m butterfly and two relays. No one has ever won gold in all five events.
Nearly 15,000 athletes will take part in the Games.
The Olympic kit, designed by Stella McCartney and worn by basketballer Drew Sullivan, features 590 items suited to 46 sporting activities. Prices from £212 for trainers to £5 for a wristband.
Ticket sales have raised £527 million so far.
The only branded products on site will be Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Cadbury.
More than one million pieces of sports equipment will be used at the games and donated to charity afterwards, including 541 lifejackets and 356 pairs of boxing gloves.
There are 26 featured sports for the Olympic Games and 20 for the Paralympic. See below for each:
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