Welcome to London! Olympic athletes touch down... and their bus promptly gets lost for four hours

 
1/2
Matthew Beard16 July 2012

The Olympics arrived in London today as thousands of athletes and officials touched down and the first dedicated VIP lanes came into force.

Teams from 30 nations, including US, Australia, Italy, Russia and China, flew in and headed for the athletes’ village in Stratford which opened this morning.

There were a few early hitches. Baggage handlers at Heathrow lost three sets of sails belonging to the Australian team and a special Games lane on the M4 caused confusion among motorists.

Two teams got lost on the way from Heathrow to Stratford. A bus carrying Australian team officials took three hours to get to the village, taking in diversions via Buckingham Palace and West Ham.

The delay was caused because their driver, working as a volunteer for Games organisers Locog on his first trip across town, could not operate the satellite navigation system.

He had to admit that he could not locate the destination on the onboard computer and a member of the 30-strong Australian party of medical staff and other officials used an iPhone to navigate.

“It would have been a great tourist trip if that is what you are here for,” said Australian official Damian Kelly.

A second vehicle carrying United States athletes took four hours to get from the airport to the athletes’ village in Stratford.

Boris Johnson said: “They had the scenic view of London, they had the chance to see more of our beautiful scenery than they bargained for.”

Two-time world 400 metres hurdles champion Kerron Clement, 26, on the American coach, said his first impression of the London was less than favourable.

After leaving Heathrow early this morning the former gold medallist Clement tweeted from the lost bus: “Um, so we’ve been lost on the road for 4 hrs. Not a good first impression London. Athletes are sleepy, hungry and need to pee. Could we get to the Olympic Village please.”

A media shuttle bus also had difficulty finding its destination. The double decker, travelling from Russell Square to the Olympic Park, pulled over 30 minutes into its journey.

The driver said: “Sorry about this.” He then got out a map, before performing a U-turn and quickly getting back on the correct route.

This follows a bus driver getting lost on one of the two roads in the Olympic Park last week. Locog were not available for comment.

The Australian Olympic sailing team lost their equipment and were forced to wait for more than an hour at Heathrow. Baggage handlers misplaced the three cloth sails — and then a bus failed to collect dozens of Australian competitors after they arrived on a red-eye flight from Perth at 6.30am.

Olympic champion Elise Rechichi, 27, revealed Heathrow’s teething problems on Twitter as one of the first athletes to arrive on the busiest day in the airport’s 83-year history.

She tweeted: “Uh-oh! Handlers lost our 3 sets of Olympic sails! Got sent to cargo apparently ... Wouldn’t mind them back please.” Later, the sails were located and were driven to catch up with the Australian sailing team at their camp in Weymouth, Dorset.

Nick Cole, head of Olympics for owners BAA, warned the airport faced “major challenges” in getting athletes and other officials through security.

He said Heathrow would process around 237,000 passengers today — almost 50,000 more than normal. They included the first 335 athletes and more than 1,000 members of the “Games Family” —Olympics officials, sponsors and other international dignitaries.

Mr Cole said: “We have spent seven years preparing for the Games’ challenge. Now we are putting that plan into action with thousands of extra staff and volunteers on hand to welcome the world to London.

“The Olympic and Paralympic Games are a marathon, not a sprint, for Heathrow. The airport has some major challenges ahead.”

A London 2012 spokesperson said, “It is day one of team arrivals. We have successfully completed a large number of bus journeys so far today, from the airport, to the village and the training venues.

"Whilst there may have been one or two journeys taking longer than planned, the vast majority were completed successfully.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in