The Legacy of the London 2012 Olympics
Gary Beckford, Chair of the London Volleyball Association tells us what a difference the London Olympics made to Volleyball in London.
London 2012 Legacy
Lots of people have said that there was little or no Volleyball Legacy from the 2012 Games. Everything about the games was very special and was such a positive experience for me.
The All Nations Volleyball tournament was inspired by the bid in 2005, the trip to Singapore with 2 young players securing the games was amazing, seeing some of the players that started at East London Lynx Sitting Volleyball Club in 2006, with Robbie Barrett, Karen Hung and me, competing at the Paralympics, seeing a young boy I coached at school aged 14 develop into the assistant coach of a GB team (later to be head coach and giving so much back to the sport), and seeing players that I have worked with as juniors proudly playing at the games in both the male and female teams, being a volunteer at the beach and sitting events and meeting so many great people are things that I will never forget and will always treasure. From a London-wide perspective, there were also so many positives. New sitting volleyball teams, the All Nations Volleyball tournament, Elite coaching opportunities for London coaches, Olympians as role models for London and Great Britain. We have or are benefitting from these post Olympics.
More players: Like many other sports, volleyball continued the trend of seeing an increase in the number of people wanting to try it out, post Olympics. More players meant more teams, more clubs, more officials, increased interest in statistics, just increased interest in all things Volleyball. The games saw a spike in the number of people wanting to play and at different levels in London including junior, recreational, beginner and competitive players.
Places to play:
More schools wanted to play, more sports agencies included volleyball as a part of their school offer, more companies wanted volleyball at their sports days and more wanted to take part in tournaments. Prior to 2012 there were only a few places in London that could cater to the casual player, but we look around now and there are dozens of opportunities to play. It’s possible to play, pay and play volleyball 7 days a week and not have to join a club to do so. Recreational volleyball leagues are running all year round and there are at least 2 mixed tournaments per month. We had conversations with London Youth Games back in 2011 about getting sitting volleyball established in primary schools and our major issue was providing a competitive outlet. It took a while but in 2018 we had thousands of primary school children competing in sitting volleyball competitions in London.
Most know about the Inland Beach volleyball Legacy in London. Barn Elms, Leyton, Crystal Palace, Westminster, Loxford Park and Samuel Montague and Wimbledon. There were doubts at the time that they would be used and now we have thousands of beach players hitting the sand each season. There is now the realisation that this works and now more local authorities include some form of beach volleyball in their summer activities on their temporary courts. Post-2012, Volleyball has been or still is a feature at the Citadel/Lovebox festival, the Camden ‘Give it a go’ festival, Stratford’s Beach East and many other events around the capital and getting exposure to thousands of festival and event-goers every summer.
Event organization
Since the games we have had many successful small and large volleyball events held here in London. The London All Star games, London Legacy cup, CEV Beach competitions, European cup matches, Crown services the annual Live competition plus others. These have all included utilising expertise gained from the Olympic and Paralympic games.
I see the legacy as being the catalyst to us thinking differently, we had thought the same way and did the same things for so long and I feel that post-2012, we kept many of the better features from past decades and added things learnt from the games; the spectator experience, the professionalism, the fun and the creation of many more opportunities to play and excel.
I believe that we could have done better and that we could have done more. We certainly could have done better looking after our Olympians, I believe that we could have done better capitalising on the momentum of people wanting to watch volleyball (almost 100,000 spectators per day, beach and indoor) and we could have lobbied more for a volleyball centre for London, but given all of the benefits, we did ok.
