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Britain's leading student athletes will be the first to use the 80,000-seat Olympic stadium in a rehearsal for the 2012 Games
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2012 stadium to host New Year fireworks spectacular
Matthew Beard11.05.09
Boris Johnson is planning a spectacular free New Year's Eve party for 80,000 Londoners in the Olympic stadium seven months before the Games begin.
A giant fireworks display will light up the East End and top music acts will play in the arena on 31 December 2011 to herald the beginning of Olympic year.
Plans for the event are taking shape as David Higgins, the Olympic Delivery Authority chief executive, becomes confident construction work will be completed in time to open the park to the public well before the Games.
City Hall stressed the Olympic party would not repeat the fiasco of the East End's last big New Year's Eve bash, at the Millennium Dome in 1999, when massed ranks of VIPs attended and thousands of ticketholders were forced to queue outside.
Acts taking to the stage in the 80,000-capacity stadium may include Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and Hackney-born Leona Lewis, in a reunion for the song Whole Lotta Love. They performed it at Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium last summer. Pyrotechnics are likely to be supplied by Chinese firm Panda Fireworks, the company which was hired for the Beijing opening ceremony and has been touting for repeat Olympic business in London.
The Mayor is keen to avoid a repeat of the Athens Games when the Olympic Park remained a building site until days before the opening ceremony.
The party would also allow officials to “stress-test” facilities before the Games, which will attract about 500,000 spectators a day. Dan Ritterband, City Hall director of marketing, said: “We've been looking at other host cities and their Olympic parks tend to turn into ghost towns afterwards because the first time they open to the public is just before the Games. We want to sell the park to Londoners.”
The New Year's Eve party is expected to be the first in a series of outdoor events in the park for the Cultural Olympiad, to celebrate the arts alongside the Games.
Reader views (11)
Don't know the area, but Jack Ray seems to have a valid point.
- Bill, Belfast
The residents of West London, who are paying towards the Games,are disgusted that the lifts planned to be ready by 2012 for Harrow-on-the-Hill Station (and other stations) giving access for disabled travellers, have been cancelled due to "lack of funds" but the Mayor is prepared to spend a fortune on fireworks going up in smoke - unbelievable!
- Jack Ray, Harrow, Middlesex
I think it's a great idea, what better way to test the facilities.
But will it be ready? I suppose we will have to wait and see.
Mark
- Mark, Chelmsford, UK
Must be just Co-Incidence that Boris is having Olympic firework display just 5 months from the 2012 Mayoral election which comes BEFORE the games!!
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex
Added to the millions the MPs have stolen from us - tax payers will be paying for this well into the next millenium.
- R.F., Yorks, UK
Whats the point of planning it, the stadium wont be ready on time
- T, London,UK
How wonderful. So a Free NYE party with fireworks (always a cheap night to organise) with a show that went down so brilliantly the first time round. Mmmm - is this is what the culture side of the olympics is going to be - re-hash of previously dodgy events. Good luck for raising the ghost of NYE's past. Not a good idea of opening that Pandora's box.
Good to see the space in use pre the Olympics - but it will be anyway with lots of test events? But purlease - watching that Beijing Handover debacle once was bad enough but twice!!!! Does this mean Boris is cancelling the fireworks in the centre of town which a "whole lotta" more people can go to!
JuliaC
- Julia C, W6
Scrap whole fiasco now before hundreds more £millions wasted.
- Mike, London England
Good for Boris in attempting to charm the taxpayer (inviting us along to a fireworks party - wow, how not Bejing-esque) into believing that a boring looking stadium designed for 2 weeks of Olympic Games but not for legacy usage that can recoup our taxes is value for money.
No, it is not value for money nor is it delivering the promised legacy from a £9bn (yes 9 billion!) investment which is presumably why the Olympic legacy chief, Tom Russell, is leaving after only one year in post. Russell, by the way, is credited with the successful regeneration of Manchester post Commonwealth games so he knows his job, but has lost out to the boring civil engineers leading the ODA.
What a missed opportunity!
- Mike, london
With any luck it will be burnt down!
- Mike, London England
That's right, blow it up with the fireworks. Re-build it again and waste more tax payers money!!!
- S. Khan, London
