Brent’s Olympic Day
The Olympic Torch Relay came through Brent on the morning of Wednesday, 25th July 2012. The weather was excellent, very hot and sunny, and a good time was had by all, both watching the relay and then afterwards in King Edward VII Park for the Brent Celebrates the Flame event.
The torch relay ran very smoothly. It included 1966 World Cup winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks, local gold medallist James DeGale, badminton medallist Nathan Robertson and 26 other people, three of them Brent residents.
Gordon Banks with the 2012 torch, in front of Wembley Arena (the old Empire Pool)
Brent Celebrates the Flame was a great success. Visitors could watch live performances, visit the Brent Libraries tent, go on a full-sized bouncy castle Stonehenge created by Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller and even pick up a waste-saving device to measure out spaghetti!
Jeremy Deller’s ‘Sacrilege’, a full-sized inflatable replica of Stonehenge. Note the ‘No Human Sacrifice’ sign…
The Museum and Archives were present throughout, bringing an original London 1948 torch to Wembley Stadium and running a Heritage Tent in King Edward VII Park. We also sent out one of our number to ‘cover the story’ by taking photos of the torch relay itself, though, sadly, our attempt to catch the torchbearer managed to get him with the torch out of shot!
Torchbearer’s-eye view of Wembley High Road
Torch unfortunately out-of-shot to left…
Over 400 people visited the Heritage Tent, where we offered a photo opportunity with torchbearer Keith Young, a qualified football coach who has been a volunteer with Brent schools football association for 25 years and gives up hundreds of hours a year to coach children and young people.
Keith Young points to the 1948 Olympic torch while holding his own 2012 one
The Heritage Tent doing a brisk trade in local history books
There was also a display on previous London Olympics, featuring, when it was not at the Stadium, our 1948 Olympic torch, which attracted a lot of interest.
The Olympic display inside the Heritage Tent, the 1948 torch in the case to the left
We made record local history book sales, and got into contact with people who might not otherwise have met us, several of whom had material or information useful to the Archives.
Now that the Games themselves are underway we are collecting material and stories connected with the Brent venues (and one of us is acting as a volunteer at the Olympic Park in Stratford!) After seven years of build-up, we are all enjoying London’s third Olympics.
Posted by Malcolm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w3pQjvCHKq8#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRjoAZ9xfao&feature=player_embedded
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brentcouncil/sets/72157630773711548/show
http://www.brent.gov.uk/home.nsf/News/LBB-1748
brentmuseumandarchives
Colin C.
Emir Ghariani
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know so
much about this, like you wrote the book in it
or something. I think that you could do with a
few pics to drive the message home a bit,
but instead of that, this is excellent blog. An excellent read.
I’ll certainly be back.