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2012 Summer Olympics

Games of the XXX Olympiad, in London, United Kingdom

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ8577 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 2012 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012, were an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England. Some events were held at venues elsewhere in the United Kingdom. There were 10,518 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) who participated in the 2012 Olympics.

Following a bid headed by the former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe and the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, London was selected as the host city at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore on 6 July 2005, defeating bids from Moscow, New York City, Madrid and Paris. London became the first city to host the modern Olympics three times, having previously hosted the Summer Games in 1908 and 1948. Construction for the Games involved considerable redevelopment, with an emphasis on sustainability. The main focus was a new 200-hectare (490-acre) Olympic Park, constructed on a former industrial site in Stratford, East London. The Games also used venues that already existed before the bid.

The United States topped the medal table, winning the most gold medals (48) and the highest number of medals overall (105). China finished second with a total of 91 medals (38 gold) and Great Britain came third with 65 medals overall (29 gold).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2012 Summer Olympics” is games of the XXX Olympiad, in London, United Kingdom. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Summer, Olympics and Games, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 2005, 1908, 1948—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Summer, Olympics and Games is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “games of the XXX Olympiad, in London, United Kingdom” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8577. VIAF identifies the subject as 140973948. The Library of Congress control number is nb2006008174. Authority coordinates are 51.539, -0.016. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2005, 1908 and 1948.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow 2012 Summer Olympics primary sources, 2012 Summer Olympics archive and Summer research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “2012 Summer Olympics” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.