London 2012: Lessons learned from Beijing?

As Britain's paralympic team looks towards what will hopefully be a bumper haul of medals at the Beijing games - one of the men responsible for staging London's Olympics in 2012 has been talking to Capital about the lessons he learnt in China.

Paul Deighton heads up the London 2012 Organising Committee and has spent the past few weeks feeding back to his team how he felt Beijing staged the event, and how that information will be useful to us over the next four years.

And all of that, before flying to China to see how the Olympic venues have been adapted to host the Paralympics.

Paul says he's been very impressed with what he and the London team have seen so far:

"Our focus was very much on the detail.  The tone was set, as it often is at the Olympic games by the opening ceremony.

"That was spectacular, in a way that China can be spectacular, and I think we'll be terrific too in our own way, and set the tone for our own games in 2012."

Lessons Learned

But even though the London team was impressed with what they saw, Paul Deighton admits that they now appreciate, more than ever the need to get London's games just right.

"What we're doing is breaking down the visitors into various groups: spectators, athletes, the media and people who live in London but won't go to the Olympic events.

"What you've got to do is cater for all of them, and you've got to cater for their end to end experience.

"It (Beijing) really brought home how critical the integrated experience is, and how planning for it means you have to get each bit of that experience right; and make sure that as you move from transport to accommodation, you've got the handshake between the two right so it doesn't fall down inbetween."

Planning Ahead

Paul admits that they haven't made any major changes to their plans for London since coming back from Beijing, but says they'll be putting the finishing touches to everything here before meeting the International Olympic Commitee (IOC) later this year.

"This next period of two or three months is a period of refinement. 

"Then in November we have a big meeting with the IOC so come the end of the year, our next plan will have incorporated all the learning that came out of Beijing."

Fireworks in Stratford?

And what about the question that seems to be on many Londoners' lips - how on earth can we stage an opening ceremony like the spectacular one in Beijing?

Paul Deighton says: "I'm actually confident and quite relaxed about London's ability to put on a good show.

"We have some of the best creative brains on the planet, and we'll be able to draw on those to put on a fantastic show".