The London 2012 Olympic Organising Committee (LOCOG) has announced a comprehensive event and venue testing programme in the run up to the games. The programme, which will be a key part of the games’ preparation, will focus on the testing of fields of play, results scoring and timing systems as well as a number of key operational procedures and functions.
The tests will be designed to make sure that the actual Olympic events themselves will run smoothly.
“Our approach to operational delivery is similar to that of an athlete,” explained LOCOG chairman Lord Sebastian Coe. “You do not want to face any conditions at competition time that you have not prepared for. When the world’s greatest Olympic and Paralympic athletes come to London in the summer of 2012, every aspect of our delivery needs to be the best it can be. The invaluable experience we gain through our testing programme means we can “road-test” all our operational plans and make sure we have all the knowledge we need to deliver a truly memorable Games in 2012.”
The road racing course will be tested on August 14th in the London-Surrey Cycle Classic, while the following ticketed events will be organised to test the track, mountainbike and BMX venues:
Mountainbike: July 31st 2011 – Hadleigh Farm International, Hadleigh Farm Essex
BMX: August 21st-22nd 2011 – UCI BMX Supercross World Cup, BMX Track, Olympic Park
Track: February 17th-19th 2012, UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classic, Vélodrome, Olympic Park
“Athletes know that the quality of their training will impact the quality of their performance as they strive to achieve their full potential,” said Denis Oswald, Chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission for London. “It is no different with the Games organisers and we can see that LOCOG is making sure that its pre-Games preparations will give it plenty of opportunity to refine its plans and produce a winning performance come July 2012.”
Tickets for the mountainbike, BMX and track events will be available via Ticketmaster; mountainbike and BMX tickets will be available from May, while the availability date of track tickets will be announced later in the year.