30. Olympic Summer Games
Olympic Medals in the games of 2012 in London
961 Medals in 32 Sports in 302 Events
From July 25th to August 12th, London hosted the Summer Olympics for the third time after 1908 and 1948. The 1908 Olympic Games were held in parallel with the Franco-British Exhibition, a large international exhibition organized by Great Britain and France, spread over a period of 6 months. 1900 and 1904 the games were insignificant appendages to the respective world exhibitions. In 1908 it was different, there were excellent sports facilities, better organized games and even figure skating was carried out in a specially built artificial ice hall. London should have hosted the Summer Games in 1944. London had suffered a lot from the aftermath of World War II and originally wanted to let the United States do the games. But King George VI. saw an opportunity to rebuild, so London exercised its right to host. In 1948, London was still a destroyed city, and reconstruction had begun. These games were extremely important for the revival of the Olympic Games. In 2012 London was a modern, cosmopolitan city. The effort to ensure the protection of the visitors to the games was enormous: twenty-five thousand people from the police, military and private security services were deployed.
Many British artists such as, Paul McCartney, Mike Oldfield and Rowan Atkinson alias Mr. Bean were involved in the opening ceremony. The British rock band Muse played the official Olympic song Survival. There was dancing to the music of Adele, The Beatles, Bee Gees, Queen, David Bowie, Amy Winehouse and many others. A short film with the British secret agent James Bond portrayed by Daniel Craig was recorded. He enters Buckingham Palace and picks up Queen Queen Elizabeth II. Millions of viewers wonder at this moment: is that an actor or even the queen herself? It actually plays itself! They board a helicopter, they fly over the city, past Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, London Eye, through the Tower Bridge decorated with the Olympic rings. Both jump off with a parachute in the colors of the British flag above the Olympic Stadium. The Queen and Prince Philipp enter the stadium with applause. The opening ceremony was a great show!
The superstar of the games was once again the American swimmer Michael Phelps, even though this time with four gold and two silver medals he could not match his eight gold medals four years earlier in Beijing. Missy Franklin, Allison Schmitt and Ryan Lochte, each with five medals, and three gold medals were Dana Vollmer. The second superstar was Usain Bolt, who repeated his triple victory from Beijing as a sprinter. In 2012 it was not yet clear that due to the doping of his relay colleague Nesta Cater he would have to return the gold medal for the 4 x 100m from 2008.
A new sport in three weight classes has been introduced for women: boxing. There was a scandal in the men's bantamweight division: the Japanese Satoshi Shimizu punched his opponent Magomed Abdulhamidov from Azerbaijan six times during the fight and was declared a loser! After a protest, the Japanese was chosen as the winner. Since the Turkmen referee Abdulhamidov had not counted three times lying on the ground, was excluded from the further tournament.
There was a scandal in badminton. The preliminary round was held in group mode. The games took place at different times. The top four teams for women, one each from China and Indonesia and two from South Korea, had made it to the top before their last match. Therefore, all these teams wanted to lose their game in order to be able to play against a supposedly weaker team in the following knockout phase. They intentionally shot the ball into the net or out. The audience was outraged. Admonishments from the referees were of no use either. All eight players were disqualified by the Badminton World Federation and excluded from the Olympic Games due to manipulation and unsportsmanlike conduct.
The United States basketball team also included Kobe Bryant. Eight years later in 2020, he was killed in a helicopter crash. The basketball team called itself "DreamTeam". Even though this was the highest point win in Olympic history in the preliminary round against Nigeria with a 156: 73 victory in Olympic history, they were not as confident as the "Dream Team" from 1992. The victory in the final against Spain was 107: 100 scarce.
For the first time, the modern pentathlon was exciting and understandable even for the inexperienced audience. After the first three competitions fencing, swimming and riding, the points were converted into a time advantage just like in winter sports in the Nordic combined after ski jumping. The fourth and fifth competitions, cross-country running and shooting were held in one go. Just like in the winter sport of biathlon, the runners came to the shooting range after 1000m to fire five shots with a laser pistol. Those who didn't hit lost valuable time with additional shots. Whoever came first was Olympic champion.
The British were particularly pleased with some competitions: cyclist Bradley Wiggins won the individual time trial, it was his fourth gold medal, Chris Hoy won his fifth and sixth gold medal, Princess Anne presented the silver medal to her daughter Zara Phillips as a team member in equestrian eventing, Alistair Brownlee won confidently the triathlon, his younger brother Jonathan, who had run with him for a long time, won the bronze medal, Mohamed "Mo" Farah won the 5000m and the 10000m in the Olympic Stadium, a feat that he would repeat in Rio in 2016, Jessica Ennis-Hill won the expected Heptathlon in athletics, Ben Ainslie won his fourth gold medal in sailing since 2000 in Sydney.
The Spice Girls had already split up in 2007, and they performed together again at the closing ceremony. George Michael, The Who also entertained the audience.
In London, too, 29 medals had to be returned for doping offenses.