New details in ebook from HMIO: How the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Lost its Way

8000 Holes - book cover

As the Olympic Torch Relay enters its final week we are today publishing Help Me Investigate’s first ebook8,000 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.

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Coe says Olympic sponsors need a better “narrative” about their role (while interviewer Martin Sorrell prepares to carry Olympic torch)

Sebastian Coe says Olympic sponsors need a better narrative

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.

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Document: Government promised to pay for LOCOG’s losses – however big

Embedded above is a report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on preparations for the Olympic and Paralymic Games. Some of the contents were covered (mainly on specialist blogs) when it was published in April, such as the concern over the increase in security costs where:

“LOCOG has had to renegotiate its contract with G4S for venue security from a weak negotiating position and there is a big question mark over whether it secured a good deal for the taxpayer.”

Random Blowe provides further detail on this.

But we haven’t previously published it here.

There’s a lot to look at as the games ramps up to the opening ceremony. One of the sentences that particularly stands out, for example, is this:

“The Government is highly dependent on LOCOG to deliver a successful Games and is obliged to meet any shortfall between LOCOG’s costs and revenues.”

Can you find anything else of interest?

Community and charity: the alternative torch relays springing up across the UK

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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The story so far – a Telegraph guest post

The following is cross-posted from the Telegraph’s new Olympics data blog:

How many stories can a set of data hold? When it comes to Olympic torchbearer data, after three weeks I’m still counting. From company bosses exchanging ‘torch kisses’ and mapping Nottinghamshire torchbearers to chief executives ignoring official advice not to take Olympic torchbearer places, the dataset is a data journalist’s dream. Continue reading

Pricing of LOCOG’s Olympic torch relay bunting beyond some councils

At least two councils hosting parts of the Olympic torch relay have not been able to buy official bunting from organisers LOCOG because of high prices – while the cost of bunting in a third local authority was quoted at five times that of road closures and stewarding equipment combined.

Both Highland Council and Iver Parish Council decided they could not justify the cost of the branded bunting, which has to be bought from the Olympic organising committee LOCOG. Continue reading

Public didn’t get “90%” of torchbearer places, figures reveal {updated}

Updates follow original post below

The commonly-quoted figure that 90% of torchbearer slots were “available to the public” is wrong, an analysis of official figures suggests.

According to LOCOG statistics published by ITV News, torchbearer allocations were distributed as follows:

  • “33% of places held by LOCOG (total 2,640)
  • “17% of places to each of the three Presenting Partners (total 1360 each)
  • “16% of places shared between the IOC (total 117), BOA (total 250) and other Games commercial partners (total 913).”

Based on the above numbers, commercial partner slots alone represent 11.4% of the total. Only 84% – not 90% – have been allocated to members of the public through various competitions and nomination processes. This represents 480 people who have missed out on promised slots. Organisations who are not Presenting Partners cannot allocate torchbearer slots publicly.

UPDATE (June 12, 10am): A spokesperson for London2012 confirmed the figures and adds:

“The BOA and IOC and some of the commercial partners in the 16 per cent allocation also put forward members of the public too e.g. grassroots sports coaches, athletes, long-term supporters of Games and existing customers in case of commercial partners.”

However, as only Presenting Partners can accept nominations from members of the public, it’s not clear how other commercial partners would have been able to do so.

The statement appears to contradict figures previously in documents from organisations including the BOA, which explicitly states that its own places are separate from those available to the ‘general public’:

“90% of these slots will be allocated to the general public through each [Presenting Partner] company’s own public selection process. The remaining 10% has been allocated to other deserving bodies, of which the British Olympic Association is one.”

It’s also not clear how London2012 could be confident that the extra 6% of places were “made available to the public”. We are awaiting a response explaining what processes were in place to monitor that.

UPDATE (June 12, 7pm): A further response states the following:

“90% of the 8,000 Torchbearer places are made available to the public through a number of channels, including the four public nomination campaigns from LOCOG, Coca-Cola, Lloyds TSB and Samsung.

“The 16% share is made up of core stakeholders, for example, the IOC, BOA and commercial Games partners. Some of these stakeholders could also put forward members of the public, for example, long-term supporters of the Games and sports coaches.

“The rights packages for some partners included a small number of Torchbearer places that had to be filled through internal campaigns, for example, from existing customer and staff pools.”

The spokesperson does not address the question of what processes were in place to monitor any allocation of places to ‘members of the public’ in this way.

We have asked again for clarification on that process, specifically whether LOCOG can identify the 480 members of the public who may have been given torchbearer spaces through routes other than those previously outlined.