Tuesday 27th July marks the two years to go milestone as the country heads towards London 2012. Every day this week British Judo will be looking at five views from five different people within the sport. Today is Lisa Allan, Judo Manager at London 2012:

Lisa Allan outside the Excel Centre

© David Finch

On July 6 2005 at 12:46pm UK time, Jacques Rogge stood in front of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) General Assembly in Singapore and announced: ‘the Games of the XXXth Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of…London.'

It was at that moment that I decided that I wanted to be involved in the Games. Fast forward five years and I am sitting in an office on the 22nd floor of the Barclays building in Canary Wharf having relocated from Edinburgh six months ago to take up the role of Judo Manager.

The London Olympic and Paralympic Games will be delivered by two key organisations along with many other stakeholders, sponsors and partners. The Organising Committee known as LOCOG or London 2012 and the Olympic Development Agency (ODA). An analogy that is often used is that the ODA build the stage and that LOCOG put on the show. LOCOG are responsible for preparing and staging the 2012 Games, for staging a series of test events in the year before the Games, recruiting and training volunteers and overseeing the four year Cultural Olympiad. The ODA are the public body responsible for developing and building the new venues and infrastructure and Olympic Park.

Each sport has a manager and there are 28 of Managers in total, coming from a variety of backgrounds with a range of experience.  We all get on well and it is a really great place to work. Everyone has the same goals and work ethic and I believe that we will deliver a fantastic Games in 2012.

So with two years to go my job is to run the best Olympic and Paralympic judo events ever. I am responsible for the planning, organisation, budgeting, management and conduct of the test event and the two competitions and to make sure they are carried out according to the International Federations rules and the IOC charter and host city contract.

I also need to ensure that the training venues are of the correct standard. I have to liaise with other London 2012 functional areas such as accreditation, accommodation, cleaning, catering and waste, client services, media, medical, technology, transport, ticketing, security, venues, village and workforce to make sure that judo has everything it needs in place and on time.

The Games is very different to organising a World Cup or a European or World Championships where in those cases the competition manager is responsible for everything and the majority of people involved know and understand judo well. In the Games each department/sponsor or provider is responsible for their own area and the majority do not know nor understand judo. This is reason that we have the test event, not just to test the judo but to trial the integration of all the other areas and systems.

Luckily for me all the venues for judo are already built and six venues will be used, four which are confirmed:

•  Olympic Village – Stratford, weigh in

•  Olympic Training Venue – Redbridge Leisure Centre

•  Olympic Competition Venue - Excel

•  Paralympic Competition Venue – Excel

and two which are in the process of being finalised:

•  Paralympic Training Venue

•  Draw venue.

The Olympic training venue is Redbridge Leisure centre and judo will share this with wrestling in the same buildings and badminton on the same site. It is a good venue for judo as it has all the facilities that a top level athlete needs and is in a nice location.

The competition venue is the Excel Centre and the test event, Olympic judo and Paralympic judo will all take place here. The sport programme in Excel is the largest number of sports in a single venue at any Games ever with seven Olympic sports and six Paralympic sports. Judo is followed by wrestling and the transition needs to be done in 20 hours. This means I work in close collaboration with the Wrestling Manager and his team to ensure that this changeover is a smooth as possible.

Excel has nothing inside it, so it is great to be able to design the competition hall with my overlay architect as it means that we can really make it an ideal arena for judo.

Another advantage I have is that the athlete numbers are decided and 386 Olympic athletes from over 100 countries will compete over seven days on two mats from 28th July – 3rd August 2012. This makes judo the 6 or 7th largest Olympic sport in terms of participants with it being one of the few sports that it is truly worldwide. 132 Paralympic athletes from over 40 countries will compete from 30th August – 1st September 2012. Paralympic judo athletes are visually impaired and there are 3 categories of impairment (B1 – blind, B2 – severely visually impaired , B3 – visually impaired)

LOCOG currently has about 500 paid members of staff but this will rise to 3000 over the next two years. I need to recruit staff to join my team and I will be looking for individuals who are passionate about sport and judo in particular and who are prepared to work hard so that we can deliver a fantastic event. I am really looking forward to working with other judo people so we can bounce ideas off each other because at the moment it is just me. Working in partnership with British Judo my team will recruit and train the National Technical Officials and the judo volunteers.

A large amount of equipment has to be purchased including 1500 mats and we will be involved in many visits from National Olympic and Paralympic Committees, all keen to get as much information about the sports and London as they can.

This is a very exciting and demanding job but I love every minute of it and hope that the next two years don’t go past too fast!

For more information go to www.london2012.com or email judo@london2012.com.