On the 23rd december, I decided to book a holiday and take my son to West Ham. Some of you may wonder why it took me a month to write this blog post. Well I am pleased to say that the family got a little bigger in the new year and that I have not had a minute to myself. Not that I have some free time now but I have been a bit canny. Stuck my 2 year old in front of Bob the builder and gave my wife some food. job is good. and errr of course fed the new little one.

Ok, back to football matters. West Ham United, a club I have always liked. Not sure exactly why but I remember the day I use to watch West Ham vs. chelsea back in Britanny these were feisty encounters and I always loved those (Dennis Wise was entertainment). West Ham played good football and use to produce quality homegrown players like Nantes and this is probably why I had a soft spot for them. Now then, I have been to Upton Park, in fact this is the only ground in which I slept. i actually recall opening my french windows and being able to walk into the stand (quality). This is when, back then, I was in charge of promoting Everton Ladies FA Cup Final against Charlton. The Boleyn Stadium was class. Typical British stadium with its two towers and claret front gates (now in the megastore). However, like many Clubs now commercial revenue plays a key part and they had to move to a bigger stadium. By the way, for all the talk about the Olympic stadium, they got a great deal!

West Ham United Football Club

West Ham United Football Club is a professional football club based in Stratford, East London, England, that competes in the Premier League, England’s top tier of football. They played home games at the Boleyn Ground from 1904 until the end of the 2015–16 season when they moved to the London Stadium.

The club was founded in 1895 as Thames Ironworks and reformed in 1900 as West Ham United. The club has traditionally played in a claret and blue home strip with white shorts. West Ham competed in theSouthern League and Western League before joining the Football League in 1919; they were promoted to the top flight in 1923, when they also played in the first FA Cup Final at Wembley. In 1940, the club won the inaugural Football League War Cup.

West Ham have been winners of the FA Cup three times, in 1964, 1975, and 1980, and have also been runners-up twice, in 1923, and 2006. The club have reached two major European finals, winning the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965 and finishing runners up in the same competition in 1976. West Ham also won the Intertoto Cup in 1999. They are one of eight clubs never to have fallen below the second tier of English football, spending 59 of 91 league seasons in the top flight, up to and including the 2016–17 season. The club’s highest league position to date came in 1985–86 when they achieved third place in the then First Division.

Three West Ham players were members of the 1966 World Cup final-winning England team: captain Bobby Moore and goalscorers Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters. By the way, passing comment, the way West Ham and the FA treated Sir (in my eyes) Bobby Moore was a disgrace!

London Olympic Stadium history

London Stadium, (originally known as the Olympic Stadium), is a stadium in Stratford, Greater London, England, at Marshgate Lane in the Lower Lea Valley. It was constructed to serve as the home stadium for the2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, hosting the track and field events and opening and closing ceremonies. It was subsequently renovated as a multi-purpose stadium, with its primary tenants being West Ham United Football Club and British Athletics. The stadium is 6 ¹⁄₂ miles (10.5 km) from Central London.

Land preparation for the stadium began in mid-2007, with the official construction start date on 22 May 2008, although piling works for the foundation began four weeks before. The stadium held its first public event in March 2012, serving as the finish line for a celebrity running event organised by the National Lottery. Following the Paralympics the stadium was used intermittently whilst under renovation, before re-opening in July 2016 with a capacity of 60,000. The decision to make West Ham United the main tenants was controversial, with the initial tenancy process having to be rerun.

As well as its regular tenants, the stadium will continue to be used for a series of special events. The stadium hosted several 2015 Rugby World Cup matches, one test match of a tri-series between England Rugby League and New Zealand Rugby League in November 2015, and will host both the 2017 IAAF World Championships in Athletics and the 2017 World ParaAthletics Championships, marking the first time both events have been held in the same location in the same year. It annually hosts the finish of the Great Newham London Run at the start of July. The stadium can also hold concerts with up to 80,000 spectators, and due to its oval shape and relocatable seating, it is suitable to host other sporting events such as Cricket or Baseball.

Olympic Design

On 13 October 2006, London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games confirmed that it had selected Sir Robert McAlpine and Populous to start exclusive negotiations with, to fulfil the eventual design and build contract of the new Olympic Stadium after no other organisations met the bidding criteria.

The construction of the stadium commenced three months early in May 2008 after the bowl of the stadium had been dug out and the area cleared. The building of the stadium was completed in March 2011 reportedly on time and under budget, with the athletics track laid in October 2011.

Exploded view of the stadium’s layers

The stadium’s track and field arena is excavated out of the soft clay found on the site, around which is permanent seating for 25,000, built using concrete “rakers”. The natural slope of the land is incorporated into the design, with warm-up and changing areas dug into a semi-basement position at the lower end. Spectators enter the stadium via a podium level, which is level with the top of the permanent seating bowl. A demountable lightweight steel and pre-cast concrete upper tier is built up from this “bowl” to accommodate a further 55,000 spectators.

The Olympic Stadium interior

The stadium is made up of different tiers; during the Games the stadium was able to hold 80,000 spectators. The base tier, which allows for 25,000 seats, is a sunken elliptical bowl that is made up of low-carbon-dioxide concrete; this contains 40 percent less embodied carbon than conventional concrete.[19] The foundation of the base level is 5,000 piles reaching up to 20 metres (66 ft) deep. From there, there is a mixture of driven cast in situ piles, continuous flight auger piles, and vibro concrete columns. The second tier, which holds 55,000 seats, is 315 m (1,033 ft) long, 256 m (840 ft) wide, and 60 m (197 ft) high. The stadium contains just under a quarter of the steel as the Olympic Stadium in Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics, approximately 10,700 tonnes (11,800 short tons). In addition to the minimal use of steel, which makes it 75 percent lighter[clarification needed], the stadium also uses high-yield large diameter pipes which were surplus on completion of North Sea Gas pipeline projects in its compression truss, recycled granite, and many of the building products were transported using trains and barges rather than by lorry.

The Olympic Stadium during the 2012 Summer Olympics

A wrap, funded by Dow Chemical Company in return for being able to advertise on the wrap until 26 June 2012, covered the exterior during the Olympics. The wrap was made from polyester and polyethylene, and printed using UV curable inks. The wrap was made of pieces of material that covered 20 metres (66 ft) high and 900 metres (1,000 yd) in length. The final design for the wrap consisted of 2.5-metre-wide (8 ft) fabric panels, twisted at 90-degree angles to allow entry to the stadium at the bottom of the structure, and held in place with tensioned cables.

To allow for fast on-site assembly, compression truss and roof column connections were bolted; this enabled easy disassembling of the roof structure after the closing ceremonies. The cable-supported roof structure covers approximately two-thirds of the stadium’s seating. Reaching 70 metres (230 ft) above the field of play, the stadium roof held 14 lighting towers, or paddles, that collectively contained a total of 532 individual 2 kW floodlight lamps. The lights were first officially switched on in December 2010 by Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson. During the games, the towers were fitted with additional ceremony lighting, and 4 of the 14 towers held large temporary video screens.

Stadium interior

Lighting paddle which was connected to every seat (left) and what it can create (right).

The stadium was equipped with a nine lane Mondo 400 metres (1,300 feet) athletics track. The turf in the stadium was grown in Scunthorpe and was a mix of perennial ryegrass, smooth stalk meadow grass and fescue grass seeds. It took 360 rolls of grass to cover the infield and was laid in March 2011.[30] The track was designed by Italian company Mondo, and was their latest version of the Mondotrack FTX.

The stadium’s 80,000 seats had a black and white ‘fragment’ theme that matched the overall branding design used by LOCOG for London 2012. The lines all centred on the finish line in the stadium. The seats were made in Luton and were fitted between May and December 2010. During the Games, the Stadium’s grandstands contained a lighting system developed by Tait Technologies that allowed them to function as a giant video screen. Individual “paddles” containing nine LED pixels each were installed between each seat of the stadium, which were controlled via a central system to display video content wrapped around the stadium. The system was primarily intended for use during the ceremonies of the Olympics and Paralympics – over 70 minutes of animated content were used during the Olympics’ opening ceremony.

West Ham tenancy

Following the granting, in March 2013, of a 99-year tenancy to West Ham United, the E20 LLP, a joint organisation by the London Legacy Development Corporation and Newham Council were specifically set-up to oversee redevelopment of the stadium into a UEFA Category 4 venue seating 60,000 spectators. The reconfiguration saw work on a new roof, corporate areas, toilets, concessions and retractable seating. West Ham contributed £15 million and Newham Council £40 million for the work to be carried out with the LLDC and the British Government making up the rest. Approval was granted for the installation of retractable seating on all sides of the stadium and an 84 metres (92 yd) transparent roof. The black and white seating design from the Olympics, was replaced with a white, blue and claret design. The new design includes West Ham’s name on the East Kop Stand and symbolic crossed hammers on all lower tier stands, and the retention of the 2012 shard design on the upper tier, albeit in new colouring to match the Stadium’s anchor tenant. Work continued through 2016 to transform the stadium into a home for West Ham, with the club’s colours and giant model West Ham shirts added to the stadium concourse

So, here we are on a cold winter morning hopping on our first train to Waterloo. The we jumped onto the City Line to Bank and then the Central Line to Stratford. As you exit the tube station, make an immediate right turn towards the bridge and start trudging along. After 15min you arrive at the London Olympic Park (swimming pool on your right). My first impression is how nice the whole setup is. Fantastic for sports fanatics. The stadium is very nice too and you recognise straight away the iconic red metallic torch. Nice design, although nothing like a British football stadium, but a lot more like an italian stadium. We make our way to the megastore, and we can see the West Ham anthem “blowing bubbles” lyrics placarded all around the stadium. Once in the megastore, I collect my tickets and make way to gate E.

I am greeted by the security personnel and once bags are checked, we were given our audio equipment. It is another self guided tour (start becoming more and more popular – volume versus quality simple economic rhetorics!). We make our way through the escalators to the luxury VIP area. Once arrived, my son could not hold a number 2 and therefore I had to ask kindly the security guy to show me the VIP toilets. Just to realise that I had not taken a spare nappy (rookie mistake, for the rest of the tour I was praying for no accidents to occur). Once the job done, we got to talk with the security guy. I explained to him what we do (our Grand Tour, maybe should sell my story to Amazon) and got into a conversation (i.e. do you like self guided tours). He agrees with me that nothing replaces a good guide and some of the unique stories. It turned out that he was a former guide at Wembley, so I got many stories out of him. He explained how the seats retract themselves to make way to the running track and how urban climbers sneaked into West Ham’s London Stadium climbed to the roof, invaded pitch and sat in the dugout (watch video but do not attempt).

30min later (not exaggerating, there is no one on a 23rd December, and the man was quality to listen to), we were back on the trail. We made our way to the dressing room. Wow, pure luxury! I mean they must spend as much time in the jacuzzi than on the pitch. It is state of the art. No wonder why Spurs wanted the stadium! We took the usual pictures, and again most players are together based on their language.

We then made our way for what we thought was the tunnel. We were in for a surprise. In fact we got taken to an indoor running track facility, where the likes of Bolt warmed up during the Olympics. it did not take long for my son to start going up and down and the fantastic staff to cheer him on. Great experience and the little  on got to stretch his legs and have a lot of fun (just to put his 2 year old leg in the starting blocks were hilarious). At the end we had to do the podium with the medals and of course only a matter of £10 the picture 🙂

Thereafter, you got taken to the interview rooms, 7 in total and finally through the tunnel. The stadium is amazing and I can only imagine how nice it must be to get out on a saturday afternoon under the “we are blowing bubbles”chorus. We took the usual pictures in the home dug out and made our way out of the stadium.

As a stadium tour I thought it was really good, the running track is definitely a plus. It is well organised, great access for kids or disable and if you like self guided tours you will like this one. Staff is very friendly and helpful. The stadium architecture is nice although not what I would class as a football stadium but one that has got a lot of history in such a short space of time (I mean the Queen did land jumping from the plane). However, no football history yet so this is why an average score below.