LOCOG satisfied with Games operation
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E-mail Xinhua, August 5, 2012
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| Britain's government deployed thousands more servicemen to protect Olympic venues after private security contractor G4S admitted it could not hire enough security guards for the event. |
The London Olympic Games organization had gotten positive feedbacks, said the organizers in London on Sunday.
Paul Deighton, CEO of the London organizing committee (LOCOG), said in the daily briefing that the organizers are delighted with the feedback from athletes, the officials, the spectators and the media.
"I think these Games are showing the best of us, the very best of British," said Deighton. "The way we have prepared for these Games is to give the best possible experience to each of those groups: the athletes, the officials, the spectators, the media, all our visitors.
"So we take very seriously the feedback we get from them. We are absolutely delighted with the quality, the strength and the consistency of the positive feedback we have been getting, whether it is anecdotally, the individual messages I get, or whether it is the structured feedback we get, it has been very, very positive so far," he said.
"I think the successful Games we've had so far have partly been because the plans we put in place to mitigate those challenges have worked well," he said.
Deighton was especially satisfied with the transport and security which had been considered two major challenges ahead of the Games.
Just days before the games opened on last Friday, Britain's government had to deploy thousands more servicemen to protect Olympic venues after private security contractor G4S admitted it could not hire enough security guards for the event.
"I think everybody's experience in terms of, firstly, the effective security in place but, secondly, the customer experience -- no queues, everybody is getting in, wonderful service -- has demonstrated we did the right thing to fix that absolutely," said Deighton.
LOCOG said they also coped well with the transport as London Underground recorded record journeys of 4.25 million people on Wednesday. The DLR light rail saw an increase of 65% in the number of passengers after the Games opened on July 27.
"It has worked because Transport For London and other transport partners, together with us, put in place an excellent plan which they have executed with excellence. And the British public, once again, has played its part. It listened to the messages we gave them and it adjusted its own behaviour. It isn't because the trains or tubes are empty, it is because they spread their journeys over the day to make it work for us," he added.
But the Games had not been proceeding without blunders.
Just before the opening of the Games, it was reported that the police lost a set of internal keys used on searches at Wembley Stadium, which made them change all the relevant locks.
Last Wednesday saw the women's soccer team from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea refused to play after their players were pictured next to South Korea's flag on the big screen at Glasgow's Hampden Park.
During the women's tennis medal ceremony Saturday, champion Serena Williams found the American flag broke free of its crossbar and floated down behind a purple barricade between the stands and the court.
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