News and press releases

To celebrate the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games, and to welcome the world to London, Royal Mail is issuing a spectacular set of four stamps featuring iconic London venues, merged with four Olympic disciplines.

The stamps, available from 27 July 2012, the day of the opening ceremony, bear images that blend a sport with a London landmark. The stamp issue also celebrates the remarkable achievement of London becoming the first ever city to host the Olympic Games three times.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: "Even fleet-footed Hermes himself would hang up his winged sandals and send his letters through Royal Mail if he saw the quality of these beautiful Olympic-themed stamps. It’s fantastic that some of London's most iconic landmarks are now set to grace the doormats of millions of homes and businesses, helping to seal our city's status as a world-class destination."

Within the set, there will be two 1st Class stamps. One features a fencer’s lunge meeting the walkway of Tower Bridge. The second shows runners powering around the bend of a track and onto the home straight of the track at the Olympic Stadium. Athletics is the largest single category in the Games with 47 gold medal opportunities. Around 2,000 elite athletes will be running, walking, jumping and throwing for glory.

The set also includes two £1.28 stamps which allow worldwide airmail postage, perfect for tourists visiting London for the Games to write home with their memories of the action. The first stamp features the Ferris wheel of the London Eye becoming the front wheel of an Olympic cyclist’s racing bike whilst the second stamp shows a diver mirroring the Tate Modern’s 325 foot chimney with an arrow-like vertical descent.

Enlargements of the stamps were displayed on the South Bank for passersby to sign their good luck messages to TeamGB. The enlargements will be delivered to TeamGB house this week ahead of the Opening Ceremony on Friday.

Royal Mail has been a part of the London 2012 celebrations since the countdown to the Games began on 6 July 2005. On 5 August 2005, a six stamp set was issued to celebrate the successful winning bid and this was followed up on 22 August 2008 at the conclusion of the Beijing Games with four stamps marking the handover to London. These stamps featured the National Stadium and Corner Tower of the Forbidden City in Beijing alongside the London Eye and the Tower of London.

In October 2009, Royal Mail embarked upon a three-part series of 30 stamps reflecting all the Olympic sports, culminating on 27 July 2011, exactly one year to go to the start of the Games. These stamps marked the dazzling diversity of the events at the modern Olympic Games and showcased the most popular sports through to those that are not as well known.

In January of this year, London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games definitive stamps went on sale, marking the Olympic year and featuring the Olympic and Paralympic logos.

Ends
Candice Macdonald
Royal Mail Press Office
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0HQ
Mobile: 07436 267324
Email: natasha.ayivor@royalmail.com
www.royalmail.com/goldmedalstamps
Twitter: @royalmailnews #welcometo
www.youtube.com/royalmail for multimedia content

NOTES TO EDITORS

Olympic stamps and stamp products are available at around 5,000 Post Office branches, online at www.royalmail.com/bethefirst and from Royal Mail Tallents House (tel. 08457 641 641), 21 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 9PB.

Royal Mail will also be issuing a special collection of Olympic Gold Medal stamps to mark every Team GB gold medal win. These will be Royal Mail’s first ever next-day stamps. They will celebrate individual and team achievements with action shots capturing the moments the gold medals were won.

Welcome to the London 2012 Olympic Games – Miniature Sheet

Stamp by Stamp - in brief

£1.28 – Diving – Tate Modern
The sport of diving is shown here mirroring the chimney of the former Art Deco power station that now houses Tate Modern’s collection on London’s South Bank.

1st Class – Fencing – Tower Bridge
A fencer’s lunge is mirrored by the walkway of Tower Bridge. 

1st Class – Athletics – The Olympic Stadium
Runners take the curve of the track as it merges into the new purpose-built Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

£1.28 – Cycling – The London Eye
London’s iconic Ferris wheel becomes the front wheel of an Olympic racing bike in the final stamp of the miniature sheet.

OLYMPIC FACTS AND FIGURES

• London will become the first ever city to host the Olympic Games three times

• The Games will host around 10,500 athletes from more than 200 nations

• Athletes will contest a total of 302 gold medal events with the margin of victory measured in both milliseconds and millimetres

• The official programme for London 2012 will have 26 different sports which contain a total of 39 different disciplines

• Athletics is the largest sporting category at the London 2012 Olympic Games – it has 47 gold medal opportunities and will feature 2,000 elite athletes

• There are 34 different venues across the UK where Olympic medals will be competed for

• The Olympic Park is spread over 500 acres of land and is home to eight permanent and temporary venues

• Since the end of the Beijing 2008 Games, the Cultural Olympiad has been in full swing across the UK. To date, over 16 million people have taken part in events or come to watch them

• The Cultural Olympiad will conclude with the London 2012 Festival which will feature over 1,000 nationwide events ranging from pop to film, fashion to theatre and circus to carnival

• An estimated audience of one billion – 15 per cent of the world’s population – tuned in to watch the spectacular Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony live

• A total of 70,000 volunteers will help make the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games run smoothly

• 21,000 accredited media communicating the Games to a potential worldwide audience of four billion people

• There have been a total of 8,000 Olympic torchbearers, travelling 8,000 miles to over 1,000 communities, villages, towns and cities and 95 per cent of the UK population will be within 10 miles of the flame

• The Olympic Stadium was built using 10,000 tonnes of steel, making it 75 per cent lighter than other stadiums in terms of steel use. There are also 700 rooms in the Olympic Stadium

• The Aquatics Centre’s spectacular 160 metre wave-like roof weighs 2,800 tonnes, while the two 50 metre swimming pools and the diving pool, contain 10 million litres of water