FEATURE: LONDON 2012 OLYMPICS AND PARALYMPICS Inspiring a generation The Olympic Closing Ceremony – a spectacle of technology as well as a rousing end to an incredible couple of weeks
The world’s largest sporting event rolled into London, and across the UK, over the summer. Paddy Baker rounds up some of the technologies that helped to deliver the Olympic and Paralympic experience
IT’S DIFFICULT to get a handle on the scale and scope of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Even without the Paralympics, the Olympics is the largest sporting event in the world by some distance – with more than 300 medal events taking place across some 31 venues. Contrast that with, for instance, the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals, which comprised 80 matches and 10 venues, and it’s not surprising if the mind starts to boggle. Two main bodies were
responsible for delivering the Games as a whole: the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) and LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games). LOCOG described the division of responsibilities thus: “ODA is building the theatre; LOCOG is putting on the show.” The nine venues built in the Olympic Park in east London – under the responsibility of the ODA – were constructed not just for the Games themselves, but with the Olympic ‘legacy’ in mind. Panasonic, as Official
Partner for the audio and visual equipment category for the Olympics for more than 20 years, has a long history of supplying
36 October 2012
equipment and expertise to the Games – not just to the sport venues, but to other Olympic facilities such as the athletes’ village and the International Broadcast Centre. For London 2012, the company’s supplied inventory included 45 large LED screens across 28 venues, 47 103in plasma displays, 22 DLP projectors (not including those used at the Ceremonies) and approximately 2,500 security camera systems. And, let’s not forget, a significant amount of broadcast equipment too.
DISPLAYS
One of the most notable visual aspects of the Games were the pixel tablets in the Olympic Stadium. Each seat was equipped with a tablet containing a 3 x 3 array of LEDs, and collectively these turned the whole of the seating bowl into a giant LED screen. The tablets – all 70,500 of them – were manufactured by Tait Technologies, using the Barco FLX platform. Fitted with handles, the tablets could be removed from their holders and held by hand for audience participation. (It’s not known how much time was spent deleting the