Premier League, baseball, monster trucks and Foo Fighters: the London Stadium summer transformation in one minute
The 2012 Olympic legacy has been heralded by the London stadium chief, as a time-lapse showcases a jam-packed summer of gigs, sport and monster trucks.
West Ham may be hosting Premier League Football once again this August, but for anyone who has been around Stratford over the last three months you may have thought it was a venue for baseball, sold-out concerts or – perhaps in the spirit of 2012, athletics.
The stadium’s new time-lapse video released today, showcases the transformation from the end of the Premier League campaign in late May, to the Hammers’ season opener against Chelsea, last weekend.
It hosted a series of sell-out concerts this summer including Burna Boy and Foo Fighters, as well as June’s two-day baseball extravaganza, involving St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs.
It wasn’t only the grass that was transformed, with stands moved back to accommodate the field for the baseball, as 4,000 tons of concrete was poured onto the surface.
You can watch the time-lapse in full here:
More than 100,000 spectators attended baseball during the weekend, before it was again transformed for concerts, featuring more than 150,000 revellers.
After baseball and concerts, the London Stadium played host to Monster Jam in mid-July, taking 1,500 man-hours to build and remove a course for monster trucks, before the Diamond League Athletics rekindled the spirit of 2012 late in the month,
In total 400,000 people attended five major events at the ground, with its chief executive Graham Gilmore saying while the last three months were a “massive challenge” he would be “very surprised if there is a stadium in the world that has done as many transitions in such a short space of time that we’ve done this summer.”
Thanking the Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which was set up after the Olympics to ensure the games continued to have a positive impact after they took place, Gilmore addressed the extraordinary summer of transformation.
“We normally go from football straight into concert mode or baseball mode, which involves putting all the seats back, but we didn’t have the time because we had baseball coming so quickly after Burna Boy – so we had to do a hybrid version of our summer transition.”
“It shows just how versatile the stadium is and underlines the importance of having a venue which has successfully built on the legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games 11 years ago.”
“This is a venue which has eyeballs on it all year round from elite level European and domestic football to top class athletics, Major League Baseball and sold-out international concerts.”