Sport

London will be hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games for the third time, a unique feat for a host city. Although this is an international sporting event, this great occasion also has much resonance with London and east Londoners especially, as the new stadium will be built at Stratford.

London’s sporting heritage has its roots in east London.

East London can claim a sporting heritage that dates back to the Gladiators slogging it out in the amphitheatre which once occupied the site where the historic Guildhall now stands in the City of London. London’s sporting heritage has shaped so much modern sport, its rules and new games. Today, our sport is a lot less bloody, but no less exciting:

1. Greyhound racing can trace its roots back to when Knut, the Danish king of England, decreed in 1016 that common folk should not be allowed to keep greyhounds. It wasn’t until the 1920’s that greyhound racing became legal and the track at Walthamstow Stadium has to be the testament to the huge ongoing popularity of this sport.
   
   
2. In 1886 workers at the Royal Arsenal formed a football club initially known as Dial Square after the workshops in the heart of the huge munitions complex. They won their first game, winning a 6-0 victory over Eastern Wanderers on the Isle of Dogs. Renamed Royal Arsenal two weeks later the club entered the professional football league as Woolwich Arsenal in 1893. Today it is known simply as Arsenal F.C., having moved to north London in 1913.
   
   
3. Daniel Mendoza, the world’s first sporting superstar, was born and raised in east London. His first recorded fight was a victory over “Harry the Coal heaver”, and after he defeated Sam “The Bath Butcher” Martin in 1787, Mendoza established a reputation as a fighter of the first rank.