by London 2012 organisers have hailed the Olympic clock in Trafalgar Square after it surpassed all expectations by working perfectly for nearly a day before stopping completely.
After being turned on yesterday evening at 7:30pm, exactly 500 days before the opening ceremony, it made it all the way to mid-afternoon today before finally succumbing to the inevitability of its destined failure.
London 2012 Chairman Lord Coe told reporters, “People said we couldn’t set this Olympics off on the right note, but I think we’ve shown here that the Olympic clock demonstrates everything that will be disappointing about London 2012.”
“We’ve had brief misplaced optimism, followed by the abject failure, and then lots of stern faces and head-scratching. It’s actually a perfect metaphor for the entire London 2012 operation if you think about it.”
London 2012 Olympic clock stops working
The news has been welcomed by organisers, particularly on the day that tickets for the planets biggest sporting spectacle go on sale, claiming it ensures the biggest global audience of all time will be watching London in 2012.
Lord Coe continued, “It’s the first thing we’ve put ‘live’, and remember it’s just a clock – based technology that mankind mastered centuries ago – and yet we managed to balls it up in less than a day.”
“I think this pretty much guarantees that the television-owning world will be watching what happens during the opening ceremony, don’t you?”
“It will be global rubber-necking on an unprecedented scale.”
Ticket buyer Simon Fowler told us, “This is why we’ll never top China’s efforts in 2008.”
“They’d have happily put a load of children riding bikes in that clock to make sure it never stopped ticking, but not us. No, we’ll leave it to the dreadfully inadequate planning of commercial sponsors.”
“To top it all off it’s a digital clock, so despite being stopped, it’s not even right twice a day.”
