London 2012 athletics track ready

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World Championship 1,500m silver medallist Hannah England tries out the new track at the Olympic Stadium

The athletics track at the London 2012 Olympic stadium has been completed.

The track is made of synthetic rubber and has been designed to help athletes run fast times. Five world records were set on a similar surface in Beijing.

London 2012 chairman Lord Coe said: "Today marks a huge milestone for the project as the stadium comes to life."

Long jumper Chris Tomlinson, 1,500m runner Hannah England and Paralympic discus thrower Dan Greaves were the first athletes to test out the track.

They were joined on the new surface by local schoolchildren, who will benefit from the Stadium's legacy plan to be a venue for sport, athletics, community and cultural events.

The 80,000-capacity stadium is nearing completion with the latest anticipated final cost of the work being ￡486m.

Lord Coe and Hannah England take a run on the new track

The stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as all the track and field events.

An 80m sprint straight made of the same material as the main track has been laid under one of the main stands and a 400m training track will be laid shortly.

The track will be covered to protect it from the elements while other work continues at the Stadium.

"People can get a glimpse of how it will look in less than 10 months' time when we welcome the world's athletes to London," Coe added.

"There is still a lot of work to do on the stadium but seeing some of our top British athletes on the track with local schoolchildren really underlines the stadium's potential for 2012 and beyond."

Hugh Robertson, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, said: "This is another piece in the jigsaw for our Olympic Stadium."

Olympic Delivery Authority chairman John Armitt added: "Watching athletes and children run around the Olympic Stadium's track 10 months before the London 2012 Games highlights just how much has been achieved over the last four years."

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Cycle rental London outline of westward expansion

Look, there are no hands... Mayor of London, Boris Johnson joins members of the public in the Westfield shopping center as he announces plans to expand the city cycle hire scheme to municipalities of the West and Southwest. Photography: Julian Makey/Rex features

Mass London cycle hire scheme is to expand into new parts of the city after a first year of operation which saw more trips in 6 m with distinctive motorcycles, blue and gray.

The expansion was announced by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in an event before the anniversary this week-end of the plan, based on similar systems in Paris and elsewhere, and the largest public project in cycling in the United Kingdom.

London version began amid dire predictions of possible indifference, mass vandalism and theft, and likely to slaughter as many thousands of inexperienced cyclists, less hull took to the streets of the capital.

More or less all of these have been shown wrong. Use of bicycles has reached almost 30,000 trips per day and although there have been a small number of minor users injuries so far, the scheme has not experienced serious accidents.

This has occurred even in the midst of been regular envelope CRS station docking, by external contractors Serco, which has been plagued by gremlins.

Announcement on Thursday will see the bicycle was extended towards the West and Southwest parts of the municipalities of Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham, Lambeth and Kensington and Chelsea. This will happen in the next two years, funded in part by an extra 25 million pounds of the sponsors of the regime, Barclays.

In the spring, there will be an initial expansion into the West "stimulus" to reach the huge Mall Westfield in Shepherd Bush, funded in part by 4 million pounds of the operators of the Centre.

Johnson marked the anniversary with a meeting of the press in Westfield, riding a motorcycle around the main floor of the Mall for the benefit of the cameras, and staying in the buyers to travel with him, one of whom managed to fall.

Bicycles of rent, he argued, had made the more secure city for all cyclists, saying London had seen a 15% increase in cycling since it was launched the plan, while the General had fallen deaths and serious injuries to cyclists.

He said: "I think we're seeing a change." Most of the drivers has really learned that they must wait for cyclists on the roads. Perhaps to start with people they found irritating, but they are getting the same trick. They are given account of London is a city cycle. "

Hope was that as bicycles became more common, Londoners would be increasingly more abandon cars for short, local travel and formalities such as stores, said "I'm starting to sound Messianic and come now, but should not enter into a car to do some of these things."

There was no reason why the docking stations could not be extended in areas ignored so far from the capital, for example to the North and Southeast, Johnson added: "we are ready to go in any direction." "The only restrictions are time and money."

The first phase of the rental system, which took several months to complete, involves a planned 6,000 machines in 400 points of rental. Eastward expansion pre-Olympic see an extra 2,000 bicycles added to the fleet.

Johnson said that even as a great racer with his own bicycle used the scheme "from time to time".

He said: "it's a different experience, a kind of more stately walk, ceremonious is most sit-up-and-beg, I like." "I want my own bike was more, I am going to have to get handlebar species."

Perhaps unfairly the predecessor to Johnson, Ken Livingstone, who first devised the scheme, the machines have been known to the majority of Londoners as "Motorcycle Boris". The mayor insisted resisted this term: "call - religious: transport for London Barclays lease."

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The London Olympic Organising Committee President in London 2012

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