As the Olympic Torch Relay enters its final week we are today publishing Help Me Investigate’s first ebook: 8,000 Holes: How the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Lost its Way.
A longform report, the book details how the 8,000 torchbearer places were allocated – and how that process made it impossible for Olympic torch relay organisers LOCOG to meet key promises about the numbers of places available to the public, and to young people.
Following our post on July 6 on THES’s report on vice chancellors carrying the Olympic torch, we can provide further background on the processes used to allocate torchbearer places.
At Brunel University a spokesperson explains:
Two places were for students and one for a member of staff. We took a different approach to selecting each Torchbearer.
Firstly, we invited the 16 highest achieving students from the 2011 graduating class to submit a 300 word piece on why they would be a suitable person to represent the University as a Torchbearer. We chose Ainsley Bell from the ten applications. His story can be seen on the relay website. It was quite compelling and an easy decision to make.
The second place was awarded to Michelle Quaid by the elected committee of the Union of Brunel students who had asked the students to nominate their classmates who have gone the extra mile for sport. Michelle’s story is also on the website. Continue reading
A couple of newspapers recently reported on the number of Germans carrying the torch as it makes its way through Bognor – but neither identifies why they’re carrying the torch.
We can reveal that a number work for or have connections with Olympic sponsor Samsung.
Dirk Schafer carried the torch in Bognor. His image is the same as that used on a Samsung worker’s LinkedIn profile.
Dirk Schafer‘s profile on the official torchbearers site does not have any nomination story, but a poorer quality version of the same image is used in a social networking profile for the Sales Manager:
Philippe Boisaubert carried the torch in Hull with no nomination story. Could it be the same Philipp Boisaubert listed as Managing Director, Continental Europe? His profile on Viadeo lists his home town as Sucy en Brie – the same as that of the mystery torchbearer.
We previously reported on four out of seven executive board members from the company carrying the torch – as well as the chief executive’s PA.
A 40-year-old Russian executive carried the Olympic torch through the Welsh resort of Towyn under the nomination story of a 61-year-old art director – despite having a different name.
Russian torchbearer Konstantin Geskin is named in both the BBC relay liveblog and The Voice of Russia as Konstantin Raykin, a film and theatre actor and director of a Moscow theatre. Continue reading
Shop Direct boss Mark Newton-Jones carried the Olympic torch in Liverpool – with the same story as seven other adidas torchbearers
Retail boss Mark Newton-Jones is the latest executive to emerge as one of adidas’s Olympic torchbearers – with the same nomination story as seven other torchbearers.
Sebastian Coe talking about Olympic sponsors – image from Brand Republic
Olympic sponsors have been “reluctant” and “shy” in promoting their role in staging the London 2012 Olympics, according to the LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe – and need to tell a “coherent and compelling narrative”, BrandRepublic reports.
The remarks, made at the Cannes Lions Festival, blamed negative coverage of sponsors’ involvement in the torch relay on a “willful refusal [by journalists] to understand the nature of the Games’ funding arrangements”.
It is not clear what element of their involvement was being covered negatively.
While LOCOG argues that sponsors are needed to support the Olympic torch relay, and councils struggle to meet the costs of hosting it, there’s a genuine Olympic spirit quietly at work in a series of grassroots alternatives across the country.
From Devon to Moray, alternative relays are involving local communities and raising money for good causes.
Foremost among these is The Real Relay, which sees runners following the official Olympic torch across the British Isles while avoiding the torch’s stops and shortcuts. Organiser Kate Treleaven says they set the relay up in just 5 days:
“We came up with the idea of the Real Relay on Wednesday 23 May, 3 days after seeing the official torch pass through our Devon village. We put the website online on Friday 25 May and we waved our first runner off from Land’s End at midnight on Mon 28 May. We don’t want to knock the official torch relay in any way but we do feel that we’ve proved that LOCOG could and should have organised a continuous running relay for the torch. They had 8 years and seemingly bottomless resources to organise it!”
In Bridlington in Yorkshire, locals were so frustrated by a torchbearer place being given to a Saudi Arabian entrepreneur that they organised their own alternative, with a torch being carried by a disabled long jump star, an athlete, and two members of the town’s fencing club, including still-competing 78-year-old Joy Fleetham.
The relay was then called off after the local council said it could not support it.
Locals in the Forest of Dean held their own relay when the official version missed the area out, in Wimbledon the local newspaper is helping to organise an alternative event after locals were “snubbed”, and in Westerham the local paper launched a “Flaming Cheek” campaign, including plans to hold an alternative relay too.
In Moray in North East Scotland local group Walk, Jog, Run Moray ran its own relay with a target to involve 2012 local people, including the oldest and youngest resident:
And in Hawick Hamish Smith made his own torch for the community to use:
Running through all the alternative torch relays is a focus on community and charity. In Bridlington plans were made to collect money for the local RSPCA and the Katie Walker Trust, while The Real Relay has already raised almost £6,000 for charity.
In contrast, guidelines to local authorities from the Olympic organisers specify that the official torch relay cannot be used to raise money for charity.
And while councils have had to spend tens of thousands hosting the official relay – which some companies have paid tens of millions to the Olympic organisers to sponsor – the organisers of these alternative events have had to keep costs low.
“Do we need big sponsors to organise a national torch relay? A resounding NO!” explains The Real Relay’s Kate Treleaven. “We certainly haven’t sought sponsorship, and in fact we feel that it’s the simplicity of the Real Relay that is much of the attraction. I can’t help feeling that the organisation would have been a lot more complicated if we’d have got sponsors involved. It was certainly something that we knew we didn’t want right from the start.”
As for the costs of the relay, the organisers have relied on goodwill and good organisation:
“We had to pay £180 to put the baton in cargo on its first flight from Liverpool to Isle of Man, but since then all the journeys it’s had to make by air and sea have been free as the air and ferry companies have taken the baton as crew hand luggage.
“We have a couple more journeys to make out to the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, and we’re hoping that we will be able to arrange for the baton to travel for free there too.
“Logistically, it’s taken us a lot of time breaking the Olympic Torch route down into stages of about 10-12 miles. The actual route between the communities is up to the runner but we strongly recommend that they avoid major roads.
“There have been areas where it has been more of a struggle to find runners than others. In all honesty we have come quite close to the wire on occasions. i.e. phoning round running clubs trying to get someone to run a stage in 6 hours time! But, as momentum grows and word of the Real Relay grows we’re now finding that we have more than enough eager runners wanting to get involved.”
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Screengrab of the cache of the original nomination story for Samsung’s Sven Eric Durr. The story has since disappeared from the London2012 website
Nine Olympic torchbearers nominated by Samsung have been airbrushed from the London2012 website.
The MD for Samsung Mobile UK and Ireland, the Chief Operations Officer at Samsung Africa, and the President and CEO for Samsung in Southeast Asia, Oceania and Taiwan are among seven individuals who are no longer listed on the site. Continue reading
French energy company EDF were given 71 places on the Olympic torch relay – including the group’s former director of HR and communications, Yann Laroche.
As part of our process of trying to identify how spaces were allocated by sponsors, we’re looking to list them all. Of those nomination stories made public, we can find 19 who mention the company or have been identified elsewhere – listed below.
Most have inspiring tales of volunteering, fundraising, sporting achievement – or all three. They include John Saunders, who publishes a blog about life with motor neurone disease, and Anshul Sharma, who was nominated twice. Do you know who the other 52 are?
Continue reading