LONDON 2012: Pseuds Corner beckons for Olympic medal design

London 2012 Post a comment

Posted: Wednesday 27th July 2011 | 19:36

James Toney Sportsbeat

LONDON 2012 revealed their Olympic medals to the watching world tonight - and then sat back and prepared to get the obligatory kicking.

PRECIOUS METAL: This is the gold medal that more than 10,000 athletes from around the world will be aiming to leave London with at next summer's Olympics (Getty Images)

After all their logo has been slammed as anything ranging from Zionist propaganda to cartoon porn, their mascots derided as 'creepy aliens' and their torch - well it's already been labelled the cheesegrater. Just wait until Tracey Emin reveals her Olympic poster.

Everyone has an opinion about sport but opposing views are usually settled when the result is known. However, in the world of art one man's masterpiece is another man's dirty sheets and soiled underwear. Only in this world, whose luminaries rarely collide with their sporting opposites, can what most would label softcore gay porn be shortlisted for a Turner prize.

Pseuds Corner in satirical magazine Private Eye will have a field day with the thinking behind the London 2012 medals - the explanation behind their design is crammed with metaphors and symbolism that will be lost on most.

Brian Sewell would love it, Brian Moore would not.

The logo is obvious and you can make out the River Thames behind it, a nice local touch.

Other than that it looks like scattered pick up sticks - which indeed are supposed to show 'radiating energy' and a random square, not as in Trafalgar or even Albert, but there to 'reinforce the sense of ‘place’'

All of this will mean not one bit to those athletes watching tonight's one year to go celebrations.

An Olympic medal is an Olympic medal, what's on its design will never detract from what it means.

SYDNEY 2000: Great Britain's Denise Lewis and Jonathan Edwards both famously have one of these from the successful staging of the Games in Australia