Despite Glitches, Olympics Excitement Finally Arrives in London

With the summer heat cranking up and local excitement rising, London is getting ready for its largest athletic event this year – an egg and spoon race. I’m not talking about Britain’s capital, of course, but the city’s smaller namesake in Burgundy, France, which has been used by bookmakers chain Paddy Power as a way of getting around Olympic sponsor regulations. The bookies have been asking for trouble, cheekily advertising their sponsorship of a tiny French event they’ve set up there with billboards proclaiming them the "Official Sponsor of the Largest Athletics Event in London This Year!". Predictably, Olympics brand police are on their case, but the ambush ads could still have a positive PR effect for the games. After months of petty enforcement, their reaction to Paddy Power's stunt actually makes them look pretty reasonable.

The Games’ image could do with a little boost, following an incident with one of London’s pet Olympic projects this morning. The Emirates Air Line, the new cable car crossing the Thames in East London, broke down today and passengers were left stranded mid-air for an hour due to a technical glitch. Some passengers reportedly needed first aid after broiling for a waterless hour in 86-degree heat, which (just as it caused subway power cuts earlier this week) may have also caused the cable car’s malfunction. London’s prestige projects often have rocky births, and the Air Line's halt is no scarier than the opening day wobbles of the Millennium Bridge between St Paul's cathedral and the Tate Modern. Still, tweets this month have commented on how few passengers there are on the stunning but not desperately necessary new link, and the prospect of dangling indefinitely in a plastic bubble is unlikely to boost numbers further.