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Olympics 2012: Get the party started

At 9pm (2000gmt) a global television audience of up to a billion will unite to watch the Queen open the 30th modern Olympiad in London during a spectacular three-and-a-half hour ceremony.

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After seven years and 21 days of expectation, the moment for Britain to deliver an Olympic Games that "lifts up our world" will finally arrive tonight.

At 9pm (2000gmt) a global television audience of up to a billion will unite to watch the Queen open the 30th modern Olympiad in London during a spectacular three-and-a-half hour ceremony.

The Duke of Cambridge yesterday (Thursday) hailed the arrival of the Games as an "epic time" and a "great moment for our nation", while David Cameron promised a "friendly Games" whose spirit would "shine out" from the capital.

Today the Olympic flame, lit in Greece on May 10, will finally complete its 8,000-mile round-Britain relay by sailing down the Thames on board the royal rowbarge Gloriana, the star of the Diamond Jubilee river pageant, before arriving at the Olympic stadium in Stratford, east London.

There it will be used to light the Olympic cauldron that will burn until the end of the Games on Aug 12, though the identity of the person who will be given the final honour is just one of the many secrets that Danny Boyle, the opening ceremony's director, has managed to keep up his sleeve.

Visiting the Olympic Park yesterday, David Cameron said: "Seven years of waiting, planning, building and dreaming are almost over.

"We want this to be the Games that lifts up a city, that lifts up our country and that lifts up our world, bringing people together."

He added, "This is a time of some economic difficulty for the UK but look at what we are capable of achieving as nation even at a difficult economic time.

"This is not a London Games, this is not an England Games, this a United Kingdom Games. Let's put our best foot forward. We are an amazing country with fantastic things to offer. This is a great moment for us, let's seize it."

The pounds 9?billion cost of London 2012, the last-minute fiasco over security and the recent transport chaos all seemed to have been forgotten last night as the nation got into party mood, starting with a concert in Hyde Park, attended by 40,000 people, after the overnight cauldron was lit there. Hundreds of thousands more lined the streets of the capital to watch the torch relay on its biggest day so far, as it passed Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the City.

Sir Bruce Forsyth carried the torch through the site of the athletics track of the first London Olympics - held in 1908 in White City - and said: "I have been waiting for this for 84 years and I have finally done it."

Joanna Lumley and her Absolutely Fabulous co-star Jennifer Saunders carried the torch through Sloane Square, and in Downing Street, Kate Nesbitt, the first woman in the Royal Navy to be awarded the Military Cross, handed over the flame to pensioner Florence Rowe, who was among the spectators at the 1948 London Olympics as a teenager. At Buckingham Palace, the torch was carried by a Scout master and two charity workers nominated by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, who were on hand to cheer their progress.

Earlier in the day, as he visited a sports project for children, the Duke said: "For us to hold the Olympic and the Paralympic Games here in London is a great moment for our Nation, which itself is steeped in sporting history."

As well as the 10,500 athletes from 204 countries who will be taking part in the Games, about 100 heads of state and heads of government will descend on London today, in time for the opening ceremony.

They will be entertained by the Queen at Buckingham Palace before making their way to the Olympic stadium for Oscar-winner Boyle's pounds 27?million production, called Isles of Wonder.

Last night the BBC broadcast the first preview of the ceremony, shot during two dress rehearsals this week, which showed children bouncing on giant beds, cyclists wearing luminous birds' wings, and dancers throwing powder into the air. But the snippets did not include any footage of Boyle's long-anticipated transformation of the Olympic stadium into a slice of the countryside, which will feature live farm animals and a working water wheel.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London who took part in the handover ceremony at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, dismissed suggestions by the US presidential candidate Mitt Romney that the capital could not cope with the Games.

After the cauldron was lit at Hyde Park, Johnson said, "There'll be enough gold and silver medals here to bail out Spain and Greece together. There's guy called Romney who wants to know if we are ready. Are we ready? Yes we are?"

On July 6, 2005, when the word "London" fell from the lips of Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, as he announced the winner of the 2012 bid, the Games seemed an impossibly long way off.

Finally, the wait is over.

 

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