New Delhi: To bid farewell to the London 2012 Olympics, Google on Sunday has come up with the London 2012 closing ceremony doodle, which is apparently the last Google doodle this Olympics. Here are the top 10 interesting facts about the doodle and the ceremony that wraps up the so-far spectacularly successful London Games.
1. The doodle features a spate of athletes from different Olympic sports celebrating the last day of the world's biggest sporting extravaganza. With athletes triumphantly holding up the letters of "Google," the doodle looks cheerful. It is the seventeenth doodle by Google during the London 2012 Olympic Games.
2. The 150-minute closing ceremony will include video highlight reels of the July 27-August 12 Games, and in between the music will be the men's marathon medal ceremony, athletes' parade, speeches and a presentation by the next hosts Rio de Janeiro.
3. The Olympic Flame, in the form of a giant flower made up of 204 copper "petals" representing the nations taking part, will be extinguished to symbolise the end of London 2012. Like the Olympic opening ceremony, the closer will showcase British icons and British creativity.
4. Pop will take the podium when London bids farewell to the Olympics on Sunday, with a closing ceremony starring the Spice Girls, Annie Lennox, One Direction and a peculiarly British sense of humour.
5. The Who, George Michael, Muse and Ed Sheeran have all said they will take part in a show that will include performances of 30 British hit singles from the past five decades — whittled down by Gavin from a possible 1,000. The Pet Shop Boys, Annie Lennox and Fatboy Slim will also be on hand to get people dancing.
6. The set is expected to comprise a central stage surrounded by a road around which vehicles can travel, and a cast of around 4,000 volunteers will dance and skip to the beat of music through the ages. Famous London landmarks like Tower Bridge, the London Eye, parliament's "Big Ben" Clock Tower and St Paul's Cathedral have been reconstructed to complement the action.
7. London's organising committee says 3,25,000 spectators visited Olympic venues on Friday, and 1,44,000 of those walked through the gates of Olympic Park. Some 7.7 million spectators have visited Olympic venues over the course of the games. However, on Sunday spectator numbers will decline. Olympic Park will host only three events on the final day: water polo, modern pentathlon and handball. The rest of the park will be in transition mode as Olympic Stadium is transformed into a giant stage for the closing ceremony Sunday night.
8. Ben Ainslie, now the most successful Olympic sailor after adding a fourth gold to his collection at the London Games, will carry the flag for hosts Britain in Sunday's closing ceremony. Britain are third in the medals table after their best performance since 1908.
9. While the creators of the opening ceremony could rehearse for weeks inside Olympic Stadium, Gavin and his team have less than a day between the end of track and field competition and Sunday's ceremony.
10. "Pixel boxes" on every seat of the 80,000-capacity arena will be used again to create vivid, giant backdrops for a show expected to attract hundreds of millions of television viewers after the opening ceremony was watched by close to a billion.
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