London 2012 Olympics: 5 best venues

The sports are the centerpiece of the London 2012 Olympics, but where they take place has been a big part of the spirit of the Games. Here are five of London's best and loudest venues.

4. London Velodrome, Stratford (London)

Matt Rourke/AP
Cyclists compete during the track cycling men's keirin in the velodrome during the 2012 Summer Olympics Tuesday in London.

The London Velodrome is the jewel of the 2012 Olympics. At every other venue built for the Summer Games, corners were cut. The Olympic Stadium will be downsized and handed over to English soccer club West Ham United. The basketball stadium is basically a shrink-wrapped steel skeleton that will be removed after the Games end. The Aquatics Centre will have its “wings” pulled off to leave a much more modest arena.

But the Velodrome is a piece of art, paneled in western red cedar wood that gives the stadium something lacking from virtually every other venue here: the gravitas of permanency. The Velodrome will certainly not be broken up for spare parts when the Olympics leave, and why should it? This is the venue, more than any other, that the British athletes have owned. 

As much as China owns the diving and table tennis and badminton and Korea the archery, Britain owns the cycling track, and for British fans, this real estate is the dearest and most blessed plot of London’s Olympic circus. The atmosphere is raucous, and far more than expectant. Britons do not hope that their cyclists will take gold, they expect it, and they are almost always right.

Britannia once ruled the waves; now it owns the Velodrome.  

2 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.