Sport
When London hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics, Greenwich Park was the venue for the equestrian events and for the riding and running parts of the modern pentathlon events. For the 2012 Summer Paralympics, Greenwich Park was the venue for the equestrian events. The park will now be restored to its original state.
The use of Greenwich Park for Olympic equestrian events caused some tension between the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012 (LOCOG) and some local area residents. A community action group, NOGOE (No to Greenwich Olympic Equestrian Events), believed Greenwich Park was not a suitable venue for the events and started an (ultimately unsuccessful) petition to get the equestrian events relocated; by February 2009 this had gathered over 12,000 signatures.
The park also staged the start of the final stage of the 2006 Tour of Britain cycle race (3 September).
One of three start points for London Marathon, the 'red start', is located in southern Greenwich Park, close to Charlton Way.
British Military Fitness runs classes in the park when daylight permits.
Read more about this topic: Greenwich Park
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Rabelais, for instance, is intolerable; one chapter is better than a volume,—it may be sport to him, but it is death to us. A mere humorist, indeed, is a most unhappy man; and his readers are most unhappy also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)