Our Olympic Dream Lives On – Interview with Judith

My name is Yung and I work in Beckton. Some years ago my children went to the weekend Chinese school in Maryland, near Stratford. I heard about the London Olympic on TV. I was excited and thought that it would be interesting for London to hold the Games.

I still remember things were happening after London winning the right to host the Games.  Because I had to drop my children at school in Stratford so I often went in the Town Hall and the library, where you can find information about how London, in particular Newham, would be developed to accommodate the Olympic Games. In those days, the south side of the railways in Stratford was a lot less developed than what you can see today, whilst the north was basically empty. There was actually nothing interesting there.

Soon changes were to take place in Newham. New buildings began to appear on the docksides, the Emirates Air Line crossing the river to the exhibition centre at Dome in North Greenwich got a facelift, attracting even more tourists.

The construction of the Olympic venues in Stratford was impressively fast. To me these changes there were a good sign, though I think not everyone would agree with me over this. Some people even didn’t like the idea of hosting the Olympics Games in Newham, they argued that Newham was too far away from central London. There are six zones in London and in fact Stratford is quite close to the heart of the city, which is well-connected to other parts of the capital by an efficient public transport system, including the DLR, the overground, suburban and underground trains. In addition to that, because traditionally east London was less developed compared to west London, investing in the east would help the communities in this part of the capital.

Before London 2012, there wasn’t anything substantial planned for the south side of the station. In the last 10 years though, dozens of tower blocks have built here and building is still going on. That said, the south side is still rather slow by comparison. You can still see a lot of old fashioned estates here and there and in contrast, more resources have been invested in the north – this is the new area of development. London 2012 facilitated the changes in the Royal Docks in the area near City Airport, and the park where competition halls now stand.

Furthermore, the Olympic Village in Stratford has become a residential quarter. There is also an international train Station in the east of Stratford; before the Olympics, this area was basically a backwater. The biggest change was probably the building of the Olympic stadium and Westfield Stratford, the biggest indoor shopping complex in Europe. People in north London, even those from away from Norwich, Ipswich and Colchester, can take a train and come to Stratford to shop and spend their leisure time here.

I couldn’t get a ticket to go in the stadium, though I did watch many competition events on TV. I watched the opening ceremonies of both Games of Beijing 2008 and London 2012.  I was on holiday with my family when the Beijing opening ceremony was staged. We watched it in a local cafe full of tourists. When the drum dance started, several members of a French speaking family sitting next to us went “Wow!” My kids shouted, “We want to go to Beijing! We want to go to China!” It was such a powerful show! By comparison, I think what we had for London’s opening ceremony was less impressive. I had expected the London show to be something unforgettable for audiences around the world but there seemed to be something missing in London’s opening ceremony. In any case, it was great to see children taking part in the opening ceremony. To sum up, the first part of the London opening ceremony was not particularly impressive to me – there was no “Wow” factor in it. Maybe my cultural background has limited my understanding of what it tried to convey.

In any case, I think the London 2012 Olympics has done its job. Britain got a lot of medals that year and British athletes performed exceptionally well. Mo Farah the runner performed outstandingly, he and many others have indeed inspired lots of younger people. More of them have now taken up sport; this is particularly obvious with young people from minority ethnic groups. So I think London 2012 did achieve what it set out to do.