As part of the initiative, the water company has also revealed a wealth of facts to showcase the efforts going on behind the scenes, including one which highlights how the athletes in the Olympic Village will consume the same amount of milk it would take one cow around 10 years to produce.

The project is being headed by comedian Steve Williams, a regular on the United Kingdom stand-up comedy circuit, who has appeared on Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow.

"We all know about the athletes and stadiums but what about the nitty gritty of each event or the people who have spent years beavering away behind the scenes?" he said.

"Do they get any thanks?

"In the hunt for our Schweppes Abbey Well Unsung Heroes we have revealed the sublime and the ridiculous, and found four very worthy unsung heroes of London 2012."

The foursome in the spotlight are Jenny Ellis (pictured top, receiving the good news from Steve Williams), Richard Newton, Hugh Jones (pictured below) and Malcolm Fletcher.


Ellis is a horse groomer who will be massaging her mares and preening her ponies for up to four hours each a day in the run-up to the equestrian events; Newton is a clay pigeon technician who will be working at the Games; Jones, the 1982 London Marathon victor, will be busy on the marathon course; and Fletcher is a field equipment tester who has performed the role for around 25 years.

The quartet has been made the stars of their very own mini autobiopic online films, which can be viewed here. 

Meanwhile, further facts revealed by Schweppes Abbey Well show that:

• stable workers will have the arguably unenviable job of clearing up a predicted 32,000 piles of manure from the equestrian events,
• 2,000 newts were relocated from the Olympic Park to the Waterworks nature reserve, 
• 10 million litres of water will be needed to fill the swimming and diving pools at the Aquatics Centre, 
• the Olympic Village will house 17,320 beds which is around 57 times the number of beds in London's Savoy Hotel,
• 3,000 tonnes of sand will be dumped on Horse Guards Parade for the beach volleyball
• the 4,000 bins in the Olympic Park will be emptied about 336,000 times throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games,
• 5 million litres of Schweppes Abbey Well-supplied bottled water will be supped in the Olympic Village.

Williams visited all the London 2012 Unsung Heroes to present them with the good news – click here to watch.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]