Of all the cynical moves by the commercial Olympic juggernaut in London over the years, the decision to drop Tower Hamlets from the marathon route was among the most disgraceful. Lord Coe had gone to Singapore 2005 using kids from this borough to persuade the IOC of the legacy benefits the 2012 Games would bring.
After we won, politicians started going all gooey about the thought of the marathon passing along the A11 through Whitechapel,Mile End and Bow. There was even talk of renaming the entire road the Olympic Boulevard before the IOC said that would be against their copyright rules. Instead, it was dubbed High Street 2012 and there was lots of talk of using the event to spruce things up.
During this time, Lord Coe was probably wondering what he’d got himself into: did worldwide TV audiences really want to see grotty Tower Hamlets buildings as the backdrop? He decided No and announced two years ago that the traffic logistics meant the route was not feasible.
Tower Hamlets council quite rightly prepared to take Coe to court under a judicial review. Coe got worried and in May last year, Mayor Lutfur Rahman announced a major deal with the Locog chairman: that in return for dropping the legal case, which the council was tipped to win, Tower Hamlets would be the first London borough to welcome the Olympic torch when it arrived in the capital a week before the opening of the Games on July 27.
Here’s what the Wharf reported last year:
The Olympic Torch will hit the capital first in Tower Hamlets after a tour around the country.
The decision was part of a deal struck in February to compensate for the loss of the Marathon route.
The agreement, reached by Lord Coe, chairman of Olympic organiser Locog, and Mayor of Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman saw the borough reap a number of cultural and employment benefits from the Olympics.
Mayor Rahman, said: “It’s fantastic that Tower Hamlets’ residents will be the first in the capital to celebrate the arrival of the torch in London. It gives everybody in the borough the chance to get involved in the excitement.
“And it’s a great opportunity for us to highlight the unique character of Tower Hamlets – showcasing the borough to the world.
“We’re working with Locog to make sure that the arrival of the torch is an event to remember.”
It will arrive on the evening of Friday, July 20, with seven days to go until the start of the Games in Stratford.
Following its arrival in Tower Hamlets, the Olympic Flame will continue its journey to the other host boroughs – Greenwich, Hackney, Newham and Waltham Forest – before it visits every London borough.
Lutfur should have gone ahead with that JR.
Today, Coe announced the timetable for the Olympic Torch. The full details are on the BBC website here and here. The Torch will be run through Tower Hamlets on Saturday, July 21, at 1.50pm at the Bow Flyover–having just come from Newham and Greenwich that morning.
Hmm. A call to Locog clarifies matters. Technically, Coe is sticking to the letter of his deal with Lutfur because it will actually arrive from Guildford the night before for an evening ceremony at that venue well known for its accessibility to ordinary members of the public…the Tower of London. Not exactly what we all had in mind is it..?
Now, was the Torch, which will go to Greenwich very early the next day, ever going to land in London anywhere but the Tower? I very much doubt it.
Did Coe dupe Lutfur, or did Lutfur dupe us all when he announced that deal last year? We probably shouldn’t care about such things, but there is a wider point about politicians, including Coe, telling us the full story when they spin their lines. It just ads to the cynicism.
Trial by Jeory 
I have jut have to laugh! Torch, marathon, this is just bread and circuses. Key issues are the radioactive contamination of the Olympics Park, the lies about jobs, housing, parkland, etc. Tower Hamlets should have banned the torch from the Borough.
This deal was a disgrace and the people of Tower Hamlets were insulted, by Lord Coe and The Mayor. To my knowledge this will be the first time ever that the Marathon will NOT leave or Return to the Olympic Stadium for the winner to be met by the roar of the crowd.
How will the winner make his entrance, be driven down the special VIP lane from the West End get out of the car then jog into the stadium? What a farce.
@Ted does anybody really care? Had the Mayor gone for a Judicial Review I’m sure people would have moaned about the cost of the procedure. How much money does a judicial review usually cost? I really don’t think residents especially ones at the other end of the economic spectrum give a hoot about the Olympics and the mass hysteria surrounding it. I doubt whether they’ll be any political blow back over this. It terms of feel good projects I think local resident should be criticising our politicians over our failed city bid rather than the Olympics, I don’t think things get worse than losing to Essex.
To add insult to injury, Monday’s Evening Standard (19 March) had a two page spread on the Torch route, and Tower Hamlets wasn’t mentioned at all in its 13 point route map from Greenwich to the Olympic Stadium.
The issue raised is one of duplicity. Only goes to show that a squeaky clean ex athlete can succumb to the opiate side effects of high office when mixing with our political low lifes.
Speaking from up North – we are being sold this torch procession as the main way to make the Olympics “British” and not “South-East”. Watching ordinary Jo Public get doled up in Adidas designed costumes running around with a batton that looks like it got left over from the Woolworths Christmas clear out is not really something I plan to take time off work to “participate in”!
Our city (Chester) was offered as a pre-Olympic venue but not one country took us up! I don’t blame you for being cheesed off that instead of a prestigious Olympic event everyone could see for free you get this tacky procession!
Perhaps another Torch can be produced for the people of Tower Hamlets to cheer along from Aldgate along Whitechapel etc through to the stadium. And on the day of the Marathon itself, how about a Tower Hamlets People’s Marathon from outside the Stadium to Whitechapel and back…..
Both the Olympics and the city status bid…did anybody really expect anything else? I completely agree the Olympics is all bread and circuses. The US tv channels dictate what happens with the marathon (which is why the time of it was changed at the Greek Olympics last time, leading to heat exhaustion for the athletes but never mind – some housewife in Alabama will have been happy).
Like the US television channels were really going to want to show footage of runners going through some nondescript area of London (even if it had been tarted up from its shabby current state)? Of course they’re going to want all the trappings of olde London towne – Buck House, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey for the royal wedding connection – cos it’s what their viewers (those of them who’ve ever been outside their own country) know of England (what is the UK to them.)
The Olympics are there to enrich the IOC and all the cronies who pay enough to them. They’ve been that way for at least 50 years. And that’s it.
Tower Hamlets council sent me this response with a copy of a press release from last November in which there is the quite staggering line that the Tower of London “shot to fame” in Tudor times.
Words fail me.
[…] Trial by Jeory asks whether promises on the Olympic torch route and Tower Hamlets have been broken. […]
What a quaint and rather modern insight into our history. It’s the sort of phrase Macaulay or Churchill would have delighted in using if only they had the advantage of mixing with such insightful historians. Imagine reading how Hastings ‘shot to fame’ when Harold took one in the eye, or when Bannockburn ‘shot to fame’ during the First War of Scottish Independence. The list goes on. I’m sure other juveniles besides the author of this piece, would relish the thought of history being turned into a comic book read. Perhaps we should encourage Tower Hamlets’ history laureate to rewrite ‘A History of the English Speaking Peoples’, for Borough and Country with this in mind. It would seem to fit it with the agenda of some unaligned elements within our elected council.