The majority of venues for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, including the Olympic Stadium, are expected to be completed in 2011.

The newly constructed venues will then be required to undergo a series of testing procedures ahead of London 2012 to ensure they are fit for purpose and Luckes revealed there will be a variety of different approaches involved in testing each venue. 

 

Luckes, a former British Olympic hockey goalkeeper and one of the original team behind London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Games, told insidethegames: "The test events really are going to be a mixture of standards.

"The key thing for us is to make sure that we thoroughly examine the venues by testing the field of play, the technology that will be used by the Games officials and the venue operators and the workforce.

"We have very clear test objectives.

"In some sports, we will conduct these tests through ticketed World Championships on a large scale but in other sports, we will just do it through lower level invitational events so it is really going to be a horses for courses approach to test events for us."

Established London 2012 Olympic venues, such as Wembley Stadium and Wimbledon, will not be required to undergo testing due to the fact that they already fit all of the requirements for the 2012 Games through regularly hosting international standard competition.

But all new sporting venues such as the five at the brand new Olympic Park in Stratford - the Olympic Stadium, the Aquatics Centre, the Hockey Centre, the Basketball Arena, the Handball Arena and the London Velopark - must undergo testing.

The Athletes’ Village, which also resides at the Olympic Park in East London, will undergo separate safety inspections because it is not a sporting venue.

Luckes said: "The main thing for us is that we learn from the test events and actually give ourselves enough time learn from them so that we can implement any changes we need to in time for the Games."

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