UK - High-speed Javelin train beats the clock

[John Ashworth]

High-speed Javelin train beats the clock in first timed trial for London Olympics

* Owen Gibson
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 July 2009 21.53 BST

London 2012 organisers that [sic], if nothing else, they could make the trains run on time. The first timed run of the Javelin train that will ferry 25,000 visitors an hour from St Pancras to the new Olympic Park slid into its destination 15 seconds within its claimed journey time of seven minutes.

The vagaries of London's transport system remain one of the biggest headaches for London organising committee chairman, Seb Coe, and his Olympic Delivery Authority counterpart, John Armitt, who boarded the 9.42am with Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, London mayor Boris Johnson, and 20 Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

So it was with some relief that Jowell was able to declare London 2012 would be "the public transport games", with 97% of visitors travelling by train, bus or tube. The 140mph Javelin will run from Ashford in Kent to St Pancras later this year and begin stopping at Stratford in 2010. At games time it will be entirely given over to a shuttle service. Organisers may have headed off one British moan by ensuring the train ran to time ‑ but another was beyond their control, with persistent rain inviting gloomy predictions of weather conditions in 2012.

Because the roof of the 80,000-capacity Olympic stadium rapidly taking shape in Stratford will only cover two-thirds of the seats, Johnson felt moved to unveil his own slightly more surprising statistic.

"It is not raining in London 94% of the time. Rumours of our wetness are greatly exaggerated," he said.

Jowell cheerfully invoked the spirit of the plucky British summer sports fan: "In the unlikely event that at some point during the Olympics it rains, people are used to putting on a raincoat to watch sport in this country."

Among those touring the park and taking a first look inside a surprisingly intimate stadium that has an arena twice the size of Wembley, was Tom Daley, the 15-year-old diver fresh from winning gold at the world championships. He said it would be "incredible" to repeat the feat in London.