Guillaume and the moose

J-365 ! We are celebrating today the final countdown to the London Olympics

Olympic Games are a big thing in many areas: sport, politics, tourism, infrastructure, finance, etc.

 Did you know ?

• The very first Games are generally agreed to have taken place in 776 BC, at Olympia in ancient Greece.
• The official Olympic motto is ‘Citius,Altius, Fortius’, a Latin phrase thatmeans ‘Swifter, Higher, Stronger’.
• The oldest ever medallist was Oscar Swahn (Sweden) in 1920, who was 72 when he won a Silver medal in shooting
• Montreal hosted the Games back in 1976, but the city’s taxpayers are still paying for the event in 2006.
• It is estimated that for the London 2012 Olympics, there will be an increase in the visitor economy by £244 million in London and £518 million in the UK
• On average, European viewers each watched the Athens 2004 Olympics for a total of 14 hours

And what about LONDON 2012 ? Here are some facts and figures about the next Olympic games.

• The Olympic Stadium will have a capacity of 80,000 during the Games. It is the lightest Olympic stadium ever built. The fourteen lighting towers are needed because this the first Olympic Games with HD TV freeze-frame coverage that will be essential to capture the action. Part of the supporting structure of the roof is formed from 2,500 tonnes of steel tubing that was actually recycled from old gas pipelines
• Aquatics Centre The amount of material that had to be excavated to build the Aquatics centre was the equivalent of 160,000 tonnes of soil
• Velodrome The Velodrome ‘Cable – net’ roof is made from 17 km of steel cables. That’s over 10 miles of steel cable, twice the height of Mount Everest
• International Broadcast Centre/Main Press Centre : The International Broadcast Centre will be a 24 hour media hub for around 20,000 broadcasters, photographers and journalists who will bring the Games to an estimated four billion people worldwide. It is the size of six full size football pitches

See more facts and figures: click here