London 2012 Olympic Games Maker t-shirt belonging to Gavin Jones, Cardiff, 2012

Description

The front and back of the official London 2012 Olympic Games Maker t-shirt given to Gavin Jones of Grangetown, Cardiff. Gavin volunteered as a Games Maker at the London 2012 Olympic Games. He was interviewed as part of the VCS Cymru Chronicle Project and described his selection, training and experiences.

He described his experience with the uniform:
"But it was funny because I mean the uniform, it was fine because there was so many of us wearing it, but it was, it was quite different in the way it looked. Hang on I've got it here [shows Olympic t-shirt]. So it was quite ... I think politely you could call it ‘striking’. But when there’s thousands of people wearing it, it's fine. So there were some other people turning up but no one knew how to, how to wear it. So one of the things they said, “Oh no, you must be really smart and it must be clean, it mustn't smell”, which is quite difficult because it's 100% polyester and it had to be really smart. So I sat on the train and a guy got on and we didn't know whether to wear the caps or not, whether to tuck the shirt in or wear it out, so there was all this kind of nerves and especially because it was day one."

The Olympic website explains:
“London 2012 volunteers are called ‘Games Makers’, as they are helping to make the Games happen. The Games Maker recruitment process began in September 2010, with the London 2012 Organising Committee receiving more than 240,000 applications.
"Up to 70,000 people were chosen to become Games Makers and they will take on a wide variety of roles across the Olympic venues during the Games: from welcoming visitors to transporting athletes, helping out behind the scenes in the Technology team and making sure the results get displayed as quickly and accurately as possible.
"The volunteers will be easy to spot during the Games thanks to their distinctive uniforms, which draw on British heritage in shades of regal purple and poppy red.
"They have been influenced by the historic Grenadier Guards uniform and British sporting heritage including the London 1948 Games, the Wimbledon tennis championships and the Henley Regatta.”
(Source: www.olympic.org/news/volunteers-helping-to-make-the-games-happen, accessed 26/2/17.)

The private collection of Gavin Jones.
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