POSTED: August 12th 2012
NewsUpdate
Rogge: London 2012 Games absolutely fabulous
LAURA WALDEN / Sports Features Communications
August 12 - International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge today held his final media conference at the Main Press Center in Olympic Park and had plenty of praise for all the collaborative efforts to make these summer Games a great success. Seb Coe, chairman London 2012, accompanied him at the conference.
Rogge called the Games “absolutely fabulous” and complimented the athletes, the city of London, the public, the local organizers and all of the 70,000 volunteers for their important roles in staging the event.
Addressing the Olympic media corps he said, “London has absolutely refreshed the Games in many aspects. London promised an athletes’ Games and that is exactly what we got.
“A splendid Olympic Village, state-of-the-art venues, 44 world records, 117 Olympic records and, I would say, history being written by many, many athletes.”
He also noted on the “fantastic” public and the “marvellous, very helpful, very smiling, very kind and very efficient” volunteers.
As far as the athletes’ performances were concerned, he confirmed that they were “a dream for a sports-lover like me” and singled out the moments when six-time Olympic gold medallist Chris Hoy broke down as he won his two gold medals in cycling.
Coe talked about the resounding success behind Team GB during these Games, overall 29 gold, 17 silver and 19 bronze medals totaling 65.
He added, “There are four ingredients for what we’ve witnessed, particularly in British sport in the last few weeks.
“Clearly, world-class governing bodies, and we’ve got those; world-class coaching; an extraordinary supply of talent prepared to work harder than anybody else is prepared to work; and, fourthly, high and predictable levels of funding. When you get those four ingredients that come together, you tend to witness what we witnessed in the last few weeks.”
“It has been a splendid couple of weeks.”
The curtain will close on London 2012 with the closing ceremony tonight and the handover of the flag from London Mayor Boris Johnson to Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes will mark the countdown to Rio 2016.
Keywords · London 2012 · Jacques Rogge · Seb Coe · Boris Johnson · Eduardo Paes
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