It wasn’t me who asked the Queen to ‘skydive’ says Lord Coe

Lord Coe has laughed off suggestions it was him who persuaded the Queen to make her grand entrance on Friday night’s majestic opening ceremony.

Her Majesty was whisked away from Buckingham Palace in a helicopter by James Bond – played by Daniel Craig – and then in a clever piece of camera work, she 
apparently skydived out of the helicopter before arriving at the stadium alongside the Duke of Edinburgh.

The film brought the packed 80,000-seat stadium to its feet in one of the many memorable moments of the ceremony. But quizzed as to who it was who had asked the Queen to play such a starring role, Lord Coe remained tight-lipped.

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“No, no it wasn’t me. I think that’s where we’ll leave it,” he joked, when asked by an impromptu media gaggle on Saturday.

Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Organising Committee and a double Olympic gold medallist, who gave an impassioned speech at the opening ceremony, praised Opening Ceremony director Danny Boyle.

Lord Coe, who was raised in Sheffield, said: “I just think we’re an extraordinary country with an extraordinary history.

“We didn’t want to tick boxes. It wasn’t saying ‘let’s go through it decade by decade’, but ‘let’s pick some meaty, challenging moments’.

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“We know we’re a rural society, we know the industrial revolution changed not only us but changed the world.

“If you’d have sat down with a clean sheet of paper two years ago you’d have possibly got there anyway. But we tried then to take it through to what we are today, which is modern, confident, and multi-cultural.”

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