A subway station from London will be named Nadia Comăneci

“This is a train Picadilly to King’s Cross. Next stop Osterley!”

This is how an announcement from the Londoner subway sounds in a regular day. But during the Olympic Games, the correct formulation would be the following: “This is a train Picadilly to Nadia Comăneci. Next stop Elisabeta Lipă!”

And if you will come from the North, also with Picadilly, you will surely pass through “Ivan Patzaichin” station.

Most probably, these announcements will not be used within the subways not to confuse those passengers who are not passionate about sport, but will be bought from the ticket windows maps with the 361 renamed subway stations.

And if you will take the subway from the “Jesse Owens” station, be careful to change it at “Carl Lewis” and take the correct line to “Michael Phelps”.

This way you will be sure that you arrive in the center of the Olympic Park, the American swimmer, who won 8 medals at Beijing being designed the terminus point of this route to the Olympic stadium.

For those who prefer surface trains, the last station will be Stratford International, or not, my mistake! I wanted to say “Cassius Clay”!

The famous boxer, also known as Muhammad Ali, who before he was all the vogue within the professional ring, he won the gold medal at the Olympic Games from Rome.

“The map does not celebrate only the multiple Olympic champions, but also includes other extraordinary athletes who did not win the Olympic title, but who left their mark on sport, either through their qualities, or their defeat”, specified the representative of the Londoner subway.

Among these there are Zola Budd and Mary Decker, two of the favorites of the 3000 meters race from Los Angeles, in 1984, who hurt during the competition, allowing Maricica Puică to win the Olympic title.

Getting back to champions, the Londoner central subway line was reserved for the athletes, the first stops being "Sebastian Coe", "Maria Mutola" and "Emil Zatopek", while the north line is mostly dedicated to American basketball players , within a small number of stations being able to travel from "Magic Johnson", to "Michael Jordan", "Larry Bird" or "Karl Malone".

Photo: The names that will have the Londoner subway stations during the Olympics. Click on the image for zooming

“There were serious debates and some last moment modifications, but we are content with this result. In the case of this kind of projects, the opinions are always different, but we are ready to discuss and to defend our options”, have specified the authors of the map, Alex Trickett and David Brooks.

Translated by
Alexandra-Diana Mircea
MTTLC, Bucharest University