I found myself at Gatwick on the
4th January 2004 for my flight to Denver via Minneapolis. I was
looking in the Duty Free shop to kill a bit of time and made the decision to
buy a digital camera. At the time Digital Cameras were fairly new and had a low
megapixel count but it was nonetheless a fantastic decision and one I will be
forever be glad I made, the photo above is the first digital photo I ever took and is a view over of Nebraska on the 4th January. On arrival in Denver it was a taxi to the Hotel and a
reasonable night’s sleep. The
two days we were present at the “roll out meeting” for the project. Steven the
CEO of mobile events company had invited all the key suppliers into the same
room to explain the project and to receive the input from them about what would
be required to make it work. The meeting opened with a rousing promotional
video from ATHOC outlining the project and the history behind it. I have to say
there was a real “WOW moment” during the video which someone has uploaded to
you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4uXGPgNZo4
. Then there followed a presentation of the schedule. And even though I was
aware of it I had a real feeling of “what have I let myself in for” and “this
is going to be the biggest thing I have ever been involved with and probably
ever will be involved with” the plan was to arrive in the city on the morning
run a torch relay with the flame around the city during the day and then have
an end of day celebration event in the city. The next day or sometimes the same
day we would depart for the next city.
The schedule for the event was
1 25 March 2004 Ancient Olympia Greece
2 4 June 2004 Sydney Australia
3 5 June 2004 Melbourne Australia
4 6 June 2004 Tokyo Japan
5 7 June 2004 Seoul South Korea
6 8 June 2004 Beijing China
7 10 June 2004 Delhi India
8 11 June 2004 Cairo Egypt
9 12 June 2004 Cape Town South Africa
10 13 June 2004 Rio de Janeiro Brazil
11 15 June 2004 Mexico City Mexico
12 16 June 2004 Los Angeles USA
13 17 June 2004 St. Louis USA
14 18 June 2004 Atlanta USA
15 19 June 2004 New York USA
16 20 June 2004 Montreal Canada
17 21 June 2004 Antwerp Belgium
18 22 June 2004 Brussels Belgium
19 23 June 2004 Amsterdam Netherlands
20 24 June 2004 Geneva Switzerland
21 24 June 2004 Lausanne Switzerland
22 25 June 2004 Paris France
23 26 June 2004 London UK
24 27 June 2004 Barcelona Spain
25 28 June 2004 Rome Italy
26 29 June 2004 Munich Germany
27 30 June 2004 Berlin Germany
28 1 July 2004 Stockholm Sweden
29 2 July 2004 Helsinki Finland
30 3 July 2004 Moscow Russia
31 5 July 2004 Kiev Ukraine
32 6 July 2004 Istanbul Turkey
33 7 July 2004 Sofia Bulgaria
34 8 July 2004 Nicosia Cyprus
35 9 July 2004 Heraklion Greece
There were rest days planned on 9th
June in Beijing 14th June in Rio and 4th July in Moscow.
So in summary it was 34 Cities in 27 countries on 5 continents and all to be
completed in 37 days.
As everyone knows the same flame is used all the
way from Olympia to Athens so if we could not get the flame to the next city it
was agreed that the events of that day would be cancelled and we would move on
the next city, so If the aircraft broke in Cairo and we were unable to get to
Cape Town we would jump ahead and go directly from Cairo to Rio leaving Cape
Town with no event. Given that we were supposed to be meeting Nelson Mandela in
Cape Town this was not something we could contemplate. There was going to be
travelling entourage of about 150-200 people with the Torch some of whom needed
to be in the City before the arrival of the flame therefore we were going to
need two aircraft we also had a lot of cargo including 8 motor bikes that also
needed to be transported between the city’s every day and some of the distances
to be covered overnight were large so the aircraft needed to be large. Taking
all these facts into account it was agreed that we would use two Boeing 747-200’s.
This would give us a backup aircraft as well as allowing one aircraft to leave
slightly ahead of the first one with the advance party and finally having the
cargo capacity and range for the distances we needed to cover. The schedule for
the flights was finalised at the Denver meeting and there were some difficult
decisions to be made. And example of this was that it had been arranged that the
end of day celebration would be at the sound and light show at the pyramids. And
the next day the flame was going to be held by Nelson Mandela on Robin Island.
We could not depart Cairo until well after dark because the end of day
celebration takes place after dark and they wanted us to be in Cape Town at
dawn for the meeting with Mr Mandela. Given the flight time between the two
cities something was going to have to give and on this occasion we had a choice
between sunset in Cairo or Mr Mandela so the Robin Island Appointment was put
back a few hours. Given the scale of the
event and the “risk averse” nature of event organisers it was agreed that we
should visit every city in advance to make and test the arrangements in order
for us to achieve this a third person was brought into out team. The three of
us agreed that in order to achieve the tight time scale for the pre event
visits we would divide the project up and I would be responsible for the Far
East excluding Australia, India, Africa and Europe, The Americas would be
someone else’s responsibility. With all this decided it was back to London to
start the preparation.
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