Olympic Facts & Figures

Beijing 2008 Paralympics Opening Ceremony

Put on your Olympic thinking caps and pay attention – here are a few things you may not have known about London 2012.

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The Games

3 Number of times the Olympics have come to London (1908, 1948, 2012)
10,500 Olympic athletes competing for 205 nations
4,200 Paralympic athletes competing for 165 nations
302 Olympic events over 19 days
503 Paralympic events over 11 days
8,000 Inspirational people carrying the flame across the country in the Olympic Torch Relay, on a 70-day journey through more than 1,000 cities, towns and villages
4 Number of separate flames that will be lit for the Paralympic Torch Relay - in London, Greater Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff

The Venues

32 Olympic sports venues
700,000 (approx) Total capacity for all venues
80,000 Capacity of the Olympic Stadium, including 25,000 permanent seats
It is the lightest Olympic Stadium ever built
2,500 Tonnes of steel tubing recycled from old gas pipelines used for Stadium's roof
532 Number of floodlights housed in 14 towers around the Stadium roof
12,000 sqm Size of the roof of the Aquatics Centre (one and a half times bigger than the football pitch at Wembley)
More than 800,000 tiles used in the Aquatics Centre
17 km Total length of steel cables used to cover the Velodrome (twice the height of Mount Everest)

The Events

9.6 million tickets for sale (8m for Olympics, 1.6m for Paralympics)
100 support vehicles out on the course during the Cycling Road Races The water temperature in the swimming pool must be 27 degrees celsius, plus or minus one degree
Esther Vergeer of the Netherlands is unbeaten in more than 420 matches in wheelchair tennis, one of the longest winning streaks in any sport
The ExCeL Centre hosts a huge 165 Olympic events, second only to the Olympic Stadium, which hosts 208 Olympic events
Equestrian is the only Olympic sport in which men and women compete against each other on equal terms
The Canoe Sprint 200m race will make its Olympic debut in London 2012

The Equipment

510 adjustable hurdles used throughout the Games
600 basketballs, 800 water polo balls and 2,400 footballs
1630 discs for the Weightlifting competition
432 pairs of boxing gloves to be worn
270,000 clay shotgun targets
190 sets of Paralympic blackout goggles and eyeshades
200 gate poles for the Canoe Slalom

The Olympic Park

587 Size of the Olympic Park in acres (2.5 sqkm)
Over 200 Number of buildings that had to be demolished to accommodate the new site
30+ Number of new bridges being built within the Olympic Park
300,000 Number of wetland plants in Olympic Park's Urban River and Wetland Area
2,000 Number of trees to be planted in the Olympic Park (plus a further 2,000 on the Olympic Village site)
100 Hectares of open space
17,320 Number of beds in the Olympic Village
98 Percentage of construction waste that has been reused, recycled or recovered

Money Talks

£625m Amount Londoners will contribute to the Olympic and Paralympic Games
£10bn Estimated amount of revenue the Olympics will generate for the British economy
£2.1bn Estimated revenue generated by tourists during the London 2012 Olympics
£537m Cost of Olympic Stadium (revised from £280m)
£214m Cost of Aquatics Centre (revised from £74m)
£3,500 Cost of specially-designed titanium chairs used by top wheelchair basketball players

Miscellaneous

4bn Estimated global audience for the opening ceremony on 27 July 2012
20,000 accredited media
Media centre is the size of 6 football pitches
200,000 Total workforce needed for the London Games, including paid workers, volunteers and contractors
2.8m Number of people from the UK construction industry needed
5,000 Estimated new homes available to East Londoners after Games, 3,600 of which to come from the Olympic Village site
7 Time in minutes to get from Kings Cross in central London to Olympic Park on the Javelin high-speed train service, designed to carry 320,000 people per hour
The London 2012 Olympic gold medal is made up of 92.5% silver, 1.34% gold and the remainder copper
The silver medal is made up of 92.5% silver, with the remainder copper
The bronze medal is made up of 97% copper, 2.5% zinc and 0.5% tin