Regular readers will have noticed that my last seven posts, and the great majority of posts this year, have been about the Olympic Games – specifically, the Olympic Park in East London. I’ve been pretty excited about London 2012, but I’m just as excited about what comes next for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, to give it its post-games name. Yep Sport started as an orienteering events and training blog – but Attackpoint largely serves that purpose for me now, so while I’ll continue to mention orienteering, cycling, running, hillwalking and OpenStreetMap from time-to-time, I’m going to focus more closely on what happens to the Olympic Park in the next few years – and not just because I think it will make an amazing venue for a future orienteering race to complement the City Race that I co-founded in 2008.
I already have a couple of ties to the Olympic Park. Until recently, I lived just the other side of Victoria Park, and could see the lighting gantries of the Olympic Stadium, under construction, from my kitchen window. I’m now further up the Lea Valley but still just a short cycle ride away from the Park. Also I was responsible for naming one of the five neighbourhoods that will be built, over the next 15 years, in the park – namely East Wick – it’s the bit east of Hackney Wick appropriately enough, and I like the name “Wick” as I spent a year near Wick in the far north of Scotland. Coincidently, my current duties as an Olympic volunteer, or Games Maker, have me working by the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in the north-west part of the park – which is the bit that will become East Wick.
At the moment I’m gathering some links relevant to the legacy plans for the park.
Top: CGI image from the LLDC website. Bottom: Aerial image of the park just before the Olympic Games, from Google Maps.