Waiting for the Games to begin

A YOUNG boy, his face pressed firm against the plate glass, points in the direction of a towering, twisting hulk of clay-red metal in the middle distance asks “Is that a roller coaster, daddy?” His father, reading off an inscription on a nearby viewing panel replies: “No son, it says here it’s a piece of art.”

Designed by artist Anish Kapoor, the 115 metre-high ArcelorMittal Orbit (so-named after the Indian steel magnates who contributed much of the £20m [€24m] cost) isn’t any old piece of art — it is the largest public work ever commissioned in Britain and the centre point of London’s Olympic village. Unfortunately it still looks like a grandiose Coney Island Cyclone, albeit one with an Olympic motif and an observation deck that promises an unparalleled eye-full of the East End.

Until the Orbit opens later in the year, however, the best views of the 500-acre Stratford Olympic site are not to be found inside the heavily cordoned-off village, but from the London 2012 shop in the adjacent shopping mall, Westfield Stratford City.