Some 40,000 people gathered in east London on late Saturday night to witness a 9-year-old girl opening a new Olympic Stadium in the British capital that will be the venue of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, BBC reported.

The 9-year-old girl, Niamh Clarke-Willis, chosen among the first 100 youngsters to open stadium in Stratford, pressed a button releasing hundreds of balloons with Lord Sebastian Coe, the head of the Locog organizing committee.

“We want thousands of young people to be inspired to take up sport. We hope that for a few of them it will be the start of their journey,” BBC quoted Coe as saying, who wants his country’s athletes to take the most of the medals.

Before 2008, Britain had last finished fourth in the medals table in Paris in 1924, and slipped as low as 36th at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.