Olympic organisers are hopeful that the London athletes’ village will not be disrupted by non-stop partying from competitors who have completed their events.

Unveiling the £1 billion village that will be home to some of the biggest names at the London Games, including Jessica Ennis and the Team GB footballers, possibly David Beckham, the organising committee said the bright lights of central London should ensure that those who do party will do so away from those still in competition.

Athletes letting their hair down once they have finished competition is a recurring issue for Games organisers, with swimmers often singled out as the most likely to relax once their program is complete at the end of the first week.

Former triple-jump gold medallist Jonathan Edwards, now the chairman of the athletes’ committee that advised on the village design, complained about the conduct of some of his British team-mates at the Sydney Olympics.

“They are there to have fun,” he said. “They finish their competition and stay in the village and party for the rest of the Games. “If my sleep is interrupted by the swimmers coming back at 2am from a party because they are finished, I might be tempted to move out of the village.”

Former US double-gold swimmer Nelson Diebel once said the Games is “a two-week-long private party for thousands of hard bodies”, and Locog will provide around 150,000 free condoms in the village.Unveiling the facility on Thursday, Edwards said he hoped athlete’s would respect their peers in London. “I think that there will be a lot of respect shown for each other by the athletes who stay here,” he said. “For those who are still competing, a single slammed door at 1am the night before their event could have an impact.

“But if some athletes were making a lot of noise in the early hours I am sure that they would be told and sorted out by others.” Tony Sainsbury, the general manager of the village who has attended 13 Olympic Games, said he expected partying to take place largely off-site.

“With central London so easily accessible we think that anyone who is in that mood will go and do it in London. You are not going to want to come back here.”

There will be limited room for partying in the well-appointed but functional rooms that will be home for the athletes in the most important three weeks of their careers.

London believes it has created the best athletes’ village ever. It is closer to the Olympic Park than at any recent Games, with just a short walk or brief shuttle services taking them to venues. The rooms are all adequately appointed with functional furniture, courtesy of a vast procurement operation. The 2,800 apartments have been provided with 16,000 beds, 9,000 wardrobes and 11,000 sofas, all built by a 40-strong team working full-time assembling flat-pack furniture.

All rooms are twins, with two-metre by one-metre single beds, with 40cm extensions available for extra-tall athletes. Edwards and his colleagues personally tested eight different mattresses before deciding on which model to use.

The apartments will have four, six or eight athletes sharing and have internet access and televisions that will have access to all Freeview channels, as well as all streams provided by the Olympic Broadcast Network.

The flats do not have kitchens. Instead the athletes and teams will eat in a vast dining room capable of serving 5,000 covers at a time.

There will be a state-of-the-art gym and a polyclinic, as well as an anti-doping facility within the village. All athletes and team members will have to pass through airport-style security screening to get into the facility.

Edwards, who competed at four Olympics, said that they had focused relentlessly on detail to ensure that athletes have “the perfect platform” for putting in great performances.

“The most important things are getting a good night’s sleep, eating excellent food, and that the transport works. We think we have done that, and this is by far the best Olympic village yet in my experience.

“The Olympics is strange because it is the most important competition of your life but it’s perhaps the least ideal accommodation. At a World Championship I would be used to my own en-suite room. But when I won in Sydney I was sharing with a snoring Steve Backley.”

Facts and Figures

• 16,000 beds, 9,000 wardrobes and 11,000 sofas
• 22,000 pillows, 1,200 blankets and 28,000 duvets
• Each flat has its own lounge with TV and broadband
• 2,818 apartments across 11 residential plots

Source: London 2012 Olympics: athlete accommodation unveiled | The Telegraph
Tags: INFRASTRUCTURE | VILLAGE | FLATS

It's not certain Usain Bolt could get his 6ft 5in frame into one of the new baths but the view the world-beating sprinter would get from the bedrooms is gold medal class.

The Sun was yesterday given a first look at the apartments and townhouses which will accommodate up to 17,000 Olympic athletes next year before becoming a ready-made new neighbourhood for East Londoners.

The newly-named East Village, on the doorstep of The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, promises to join the city's top addresses — with its own postcode, E20 — from 2013.

In the meantime it will be the base for Olympians like Jamaican Usain and Paralympians from more than 200 countries next year, including 550 athletes from Team GB.

Yesterday an army of 3,000 fluorescent-jacketed, hard-hatted workers was putting the finishing touches to the £1billion state-of-the-art development — landscaping gardens, laying pavements and testing how airtight the swish, underfloor-heated apartments are.

Furnishings will be moved in by The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games — LOCOG — early next year.

Even without the beds and wardrobes, it is already possible to see the stylish surroundings in which the athletes will relax as they prepare to compete.

The first competition will be to get one of the apartments with the best views.

Those who get booked into one on the western edge of the village will have a spectacular, uninterrupted sight of the Olympic Stadium a short sprint away and the whole of central London beyond.

Those accommodated in the north-facing blocks — rumoured to include British heptathlon hopeful Jessica Ennis and the rest of Team GB — will look out over the Velodrome, Basketball Arena and the Lea Valley.

Many of the other flats and townhouses boast vistas over the Olympic Park and the London skyline and all the athletes will be able to enjoy rooftop gardens with special wildlife habitats, wide tree-lined avenues, open parkland and private courtyard gardens — some already equipped with children's playgrounds for the families who will follow.

Those accommodated in the north-facing blocks — rumoured to include British heptathlon hopeful Jessica Ennis and the rest of Team GB — will look out over the Velodrome, Basketball Arena and the Lea Valley.

Many of the other flats and townhouses boast vistas over the Olympic Park and the London skyline and all the athletes will be able to enjoy rooftop gardens with special wildlife habitats, wide tree-lined avenues, open parkland and private courtyard gardens — some already equipped with children's playgrounds for the families who will follow.

The village will have a natural amphitheatre in the Victory Park at the heart of the development, where all Olympic teams arriving to be accommodated will be greeted with a rendition of their national anthem.

East Village, when it is made available after the Games for a mixture of private renting and affordable social housing, will boast a world-class education campus — Chobham Academy — which will offer education for 1,800 local students aged between three and 19 and a state-of-the-art Medical Centre.

For the Olympians, the already-built Polyclinic will offer not just medical facilities but a community centre where they can socialise. For now there is no sign of the 30 shops, cafés and restaurants which will be scattered around the village and no kitchens have yet been installed in any of the homes, which range from one-bedroom apartments to four-bedroom townhouses.

In Olympic Games mode, the kitchen areas of the homes will provide more bedroom space and the cookers, fridges, washing machines and cupboards will only be fitted after the Games, in time for new householders moving in from 2013.

Instead, LOCOG will erect a massive tented communal catering facility in the grounds of the village.

Each home's en-suite bathroom will be temporarily walled off from the master bedroom to become a second communal bedroom and the kitchen-to-be will be the fourth bedroom.

Athletes in the village will share two to a room so they can get to know each other as well as they want — at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Games organisers provided 100,000 condoms for the competitors.

At Sydney in 2000, they apparently provided only 70,000 — and had to order in an extra 20,000.

It's not yet known how many condoms the London 2012 organisers are planning to give out...

After the Games, the 11 blocks of flats and townhouses, each designed by a different architect, will provide 2,818 homes for 6,000 Londoners in a village the size of London's St James's Park.

The QDD consortium of the Qatari ruling family and the UK property developer Delancey, which has paid more than £550million to the Olympic Delivery Authority, will manage 1,439 of the homes for long-term private rent, with a two-bedroom apartment expected to cost around £1,300 a month. The other 1,379 homes will provide "affordable" housing, mostly rented but with some sold on a shared-ownership basis by housing association Triathlon Homes.

As well as having the Stratford station rail link and the massive new Westfield shopping centre on their doorstep, the new residents of East Village will have the magnificent sporting facilities of the Olympic Park a stroll away.

Ralph Luck, Director of Property at the Olympic Delivery Authority, said: "The East Village will become a significant new community within London, surrounded by world-class sports venues, shopping facilities and transport links. A key part of the Games bid was to create a lasting residential legacy and the ODA is delivering on that commitment as part of the sale of the Village to QDD and Triathlon."

Usain Bolt not included in the contents of the properties. For more information, go to eastvillagelondon.co.uk.

Source: The Sun
Tags: ACCOMMODATION | VILLAGE