Olympic stadium

[Mr Blobby]

Went to one of the ramp up event for the Olympic stadium yesterday. Was a good day out helped by the weather!

My opinion of the place, well quite shocked at amount of work to do, place still a massive building site! You have to go through airport style security checks, but after all that they forget to scan my ticket and I just walked in!

The stadium is big, and if West Ham do get it them everyone will be miles from the pitch. Getting to/from the stadium was easy. It was just 20,000 yesterday but walked back to the tube and no queues at all. It was under an hour from Stratford back to three bridges.

Best 100m yesterday was the help for heroes one, 9 members of the armed services who had all lost one or two limbs. These people are amazing, so courageous it was all very humbling. The amount of money raised for people to take part in events was astounding, one school in Newcastle raised £18k so that 8 of them could run 100m on the Olympic track.

Day was finished off with Spellbound doing a 10 minute routine, Paul Potts singing. All in all a good day out and a large chunck of my ticket money went to the NSPCC.

A few pictures from the day

 

[swindonseagull]

sorry but I personally dont give a toss about the Olympics

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I visited the Olympic site last week, and while much of it is impressive I think the actual stadium is a huge disappointment. It is so boring looking, purely functional - an old style massive bowl. Compared to ALL the recent Olympic stadia, right back to Barcelona, it is awful. West Ham would be mad to move there.

 

[Badger]

sorry but I personally dont give a toss about the Olympics

You give enough of a toss to open a thread entitled "Olympic Stadium" and post on it though.

Nice to see some pictures of people in the stadium at last, although weirdly I think the stadium looks quite small in them.

 

[the right footed denilson]

Is it me or does it look REALLY retro?

 

[tubaman]

Without wishing to sound too negative, the Olympic games might as well be in a different country. I love sports and have attended athletics avents but since the complete shambles that purported to be be the sale of tickets I have lost any feeling of ownership for the games. I'll be watching them like most of the country on the TV.

 

[Badger]

My opinion of the place, well quite shocked at amount of work to do, place still a massive building site!

When is that red scaffolding due to come down?

 

[Bwian]

I visited the Olympic site last week, and while much of it is impressive I think the actual stadium is a huge disappointment. It is so boring looking, purely functional - an old style massive bowl. Compared to ALL the recent Olympic stadia, right back to Barcelona, it is awful. West Ham would be mad to move there.

Wasn't that the whole point of the design? So much cash gets wasted trying to out-do the previous hosts that it needed reeling in a bit. The good thing is that visitors have got the East End to compensate...

 

[Mr Blobby]

Nice to see some pictures of people in the stadium at last, although weirdly I think the stadium looks quite small in them.

I think its because the of the massive circumference of the ground, the stands are not massive. For a future athletics stadium or cricket pitch (Essex are bidding to be one of the future users) it would be OK, as a new football stadium, nope IMHO would not work.

When Man City took over the commenwealth stadoum they dug out the original pitch and track and added a new "lower" tier to bring people closer to the new sunken pitch and increase the capacity up from 30,000. Would West Ham want to add to the 80,000 seats?

The site is clearly not finished so hard to comment on what the Olympic experiance will be like, ie rest of the site was fenced off so couldnt walk round the Olmpic park, none of the merchandise or food kiosks ready (all temporary mobile vans yesterday), about 50% of the seating blocks not yet complete, neither of the 2 massive screens are finished and none of the walk ways in/out ready so all temporary will temporary traffic lights/crossing over main roads. As I said worked with 20,000 but on most days there will be 2 x 80,000 people plus all the other venues. The main walk from startford tube is through the new Westfield shopping complex, I will be interested to see if that can cope with many thousands of people.

The tube station is massive and the bus terminal and mainline train also massive, so fingers crossed that will all work.

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

I visited the Olympic site last week, and while much of it is impressive I think the actual stadium is a huge disappointment. It is so boring looking, purely functional - an old style massive bowl. Compared to ALL the recent Olympic stadia, right back to Barcelona, it is awful. West Ham would be mad to move there.

Considering the Birds Nest stadium used 4x as much steel in it's construction ( and there has been a MASSIVE hike in steel prices since it was constructed, so adjusting 2008 construction costs for inflation won't tell the whole story ) and spends 99% of it's current life empty and the other 1% as a tourist attraction, I'd say that making the design as efficient as possible and functional is probably much better for the environment. Don't forget the design is meant to allow for the whole of the top tier to be removed and replaced with a more permanent smaller structure after the games.

You can call it boring if you want, but the alternative you're after is an extravagant and wasteful white elephant - at a time of public spending cuts I'm sure the Govt. would be really happen to find themselves with an unexpected massive spend to bail out the inevitable cost overrun. Tbh I'm quite happy with the idea of an old style massive bowl as that's one type of stadium that we've never really had in this Country, other than White City and the Old Wembley, neither of which are still around.

 

[strings]

I like it, am am looking forward to the games. Top photos, [MENTION=474]Mr Blobby[/MENTION]

 

[Superphil]

sorry but I personally dont give a toss about the Olympics

Why do you feel the need to post that on a thread talking about positive activities going on there?

 

[Oscar]

What were the pies like?

 

[Hatterlovesbrighton]

Without wishing to sound too negative, the Olympic games might as well be in a different country. I love sports and have attended athletics avents but since the complete shambles that purported to be be the sale of tickets I have lost any feeling of ownership for the games. I'll be watching them like most of the country on the TV.

So how would you have done the ticket sale? What did you apply for?

 

[Falkor]

cant wait to go really looking forward to it

 

[Tooting Gull]

Must have been good to see it. I was going to go to the Universities event there in early May, but am now away working unfortunately.

West Ham fans have really been sold a pup there by Sullivan, Gold and Brady. How did it ever get this far without a serious campaign not to go there? They will hate it. I think they just got suckered in to trying to beat Spurs at something, who will now got the cash they wanted to stay in Tottenham. Spurs - big winners. West Ham - big losers.

 

[yxee]

What's the latest news ? It's definitely going to West Ham?

Last I heard it was deadlocked.

 

[Falkor]

Must have been good to see it. I was going to go to the Universities event there in early May, but am now away working unfortunately.

West Ham fans have really been sold a pup there by Sullivan, Gold and Brady. How did it ever get this far without a serious campaign not to go there? They will hate it. I think they just got suckered in to trying to beat Spurs at something, who will now got the cash they wanted to stay in Tottenham. Spurs - big winners. West Ham - big losers.

There is Gold and Sullivan said they would hold a poll and see what the consensus was as the fans stated they didnt want it, but then they went ahead with it anyway, there will be retractable seating and a new roof will have to be built.

 

[Hatterlovesbrighton]

What's the latest news ? It's definitely going to West Ham?

Last I heard it was deadlocked.

They ditched the last process. Is now be kept in public hands but being leased out. There are 4 bidders for the lease, including West Ham and Essex Univertsity (with Essex CCC). Decided about May apparently.

 

[tubaman]

So how would you have done the ticket sale? What did you apply for?

The public sale turned into a game for the rich. The public were told not to bid for more than you could afford but this wasn't accurate. It turned out that the ticket money was NOT automatically removed from bank accounts and those that were awarded tickets were able to pick and choose. It became quite obvious by the second round of bidding that those who gambled with money they probably did not have were at an advantage to those who stuck to the rules. The more money you gambled , the more chance of winning.

Personally, the whole of my family (5 different people) bid for tickets and we got none. I only know of one person who got a decent athletics ticket.