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UK monarch Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the 2012 Summer Olympics in London in the early hours of this morning. Some sixty thousand spectators observed sixteen thousand athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) walking into the Olympic Stadium in the British capital. London is thus far the only city to host the Olympics for a third time.
Academy Award winning director Danny Boyle was the artistic director for the opening ceremony, which commenced at 2100 BST (2000 UTC) yesterday and ended at 0050 BST today (2340 UTC yesterday). The opening ceremony contained a display of the British perception of the countryside and a reconstruction of the Industrial Revolution.
Although the Olympics were officially opened today, women’s football events took place around the UK earlier this week. Great Britain women’s Olympic football team defeated that of New Zealand by 1–0. Meanwhile, the United States team beat the French team team 4–2. South Africa‘s team were beaten by the Swedish team 4–1 while Canada‘s team were defeated by the Japanese team 2–1. Brazil‘s team beat that of Cameroon 5–0 and North Korea‘s team defeated the team representing Colombia 2–0. Venues used included the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff, Hampden Park in Glasgow and the City of Coventry Stadium in Coventry.
One incident at Hampden Park saw a video of North Korea‘s national women’s football team being broadcast with an image of the South Korea flag next to the players. The team members walked off the pitch upon sighting this. The video was reportedly created in London and sent to Glasgow, where organisers at Hampden did not have any involvement in. London 2012 organisers, who have apologised for the error, have yet to confirm the exact origin of the video.
Sin Ui Gun, coach for the North Korean team, said the team “was not going to participate unless the problem was solved properly.” The players later returned to play the match after the mistake was rectified. The error was significant as although the two Koreas had an armistice created after conflicting from 1950 to 1953, the war between the two Koreas is technically ongoing.
Calling this incident “an honest mistake”, UK Prime Minister David Cameron told waiting media: “An apology has been made and I’m sure every step has been taken to ensure these things don’t happen again. We shouldn’t over-inflate this episode – it was unfortunate, it shouldn’t have happened and I think we can leave it at that.”
The error attracted international media coverage apart from in North Korea, a communist state, whose state news agency KCNA omitted the incident from its report of the North Korean team’s victory.
A strike by UK border staff planned for the day before the Olympics was abandoned by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) on Wednesday.
Greece triple jumper Voula Papachristou became the first individual to be prohibited from participating in the Olympics this year after posing a message on social networking website Twitter which read: “With so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!!!” Hellenic Olympic Committeeleader Isidoros Kouvelos believed Papachristou “showed no respect for the basic Olympian value” by sending this tweet. He added: “She made a mistake and in life we pay for our mistakes”. Papachristou subsequently apologised for the tweet, saying she “never wanted to offend anyone, or to encroach human rights”.
Olympic rings placed on Tower Bridge in London in the run up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games
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