I AM not one of life’s natural athletes.
There would be no chance of me competing in the 2012 Olympic Games wherever they are held, unless, of course, the rules are changed to make either synchronised drinking or beach sunbathing official sports at the tournament, or if “three-day eventing” is redefined to mean the willingness to turn up in a continental city for 72 hours and then consume almost everything available.
Despite this, however, and somewhat to my surprise, I find myself dogmatically passionate about London’s bid for the Olympics, which will be settled in Singapore on Wednesday. Not only do I ache for the capital to succeed but, against the odds perhaps, I think it is just possible that the city might triumph and, furthermore, that it would be the height of injustice were it to fail to do so.
This sentiment, much like the prospects for a London victory, has evolved slowly. At the outset I, like many others, thought the entire enterprise was inherently incredible. It seemed a warped combination of delusion and vanity, an implausible quest made more out of a sense of obligation than rational calculation, a laughable attempt by a place that struggles to make its public transport system work at the best of times to make itself a showcase for the whole of mankind. In short, I agreed with what might be termed the Post-Modern Pentathlon Tendency about London’s dash for glory — an attitude that consists of cynicism, scepticism, sarcasm, fatalism and sheer defeatism.
These are not an appealing assemblage of traits, but, as far as London is concerned, there appeared to be three solid reasons behind them. The first was the strong instinct that the British do not do what the French hail as les grands projets. This statement has been made so often that it has come to have the seemingly indisputable quality of “the British do not eat horse”. Recent experience does, regrettably, lend authority to this sentiment. We have, after all, in less than a decade, witnessed a Dome that became an empty shell, a vast wheel that was only raised at the second attempt, a stadium that was supposed to host the World Athletics Championship next month yet which was never built (thus bequeathing the honour to Helsinki instead) and a Wembley II that has achieved the obscene distinction of costing more to assemble than the squad of Chelsea. A nation that does not do grands projets cannot, surely, aspire to take on the grandest one of them all.
Then there is the fact that this is not only a London bid but an East London enterprise. I live not far from Stratford and, while the place and its people have serious charm, it is not really the sort of site that screams “epicentre of a global sporting festival”. Indeed, to be honest, I like visiting it because it is so deprived that even I can wander around with the local population and feel comparatively healthy. It boasts a better-than-average Burger King, a larger-than-typical WH Smith and, in my view, an eerily extravagant number of funeral directors. The rive gauche it is not.
Finally, there is the depressing fear that there is not much merit in the selection process anyway. Even if the British delivered grands projets like no nation else and Stratford was one vast world heritage site, then the International Olympic Committee (IOC) might still be disinclined to endorse it. A series of scandals imply that the IOC delegates — if not exactly bent — might be more pliable than would be ideal. And if the British are supposedly not much good at the grand projet then we are worse at the grand bung when it is called for.
Besides which, we remain firmly in the sin-bin for backing the Americans in Iraq. Hell, the assertion runs, if we cannot win the Eurovision Song Contest anymore, how can we expect to win the Olympics?
Twelve months ago I would have concluded that the combined impact of these three arguments was overwhelming. In truth, though, while they have superficial weight, they are pretty feeble when placed under sustained analysis.
The notion that the British do not do grands projets is, if you think about it for around 30 seconds, ludicrous. What is much of London but a hugely impressive grand projet assembled over the centuries? St Paul’s Cathedral is, I put it to you, not a piece of mere prefabrication. We have architects who are respected throughout the planet, a flair for design for which there is enormous international demand and a major collection of buildings erected in the past ten years (notably on the South Bank) that are stunning. It was the contents, not the Dome itself, that were flawed, the London Eye will (like the Eiffel Tower) prove to be a “temporary” construction that will never be taken down and the new Wembley may have cost a lot but I wager that it will be beautiful.
And Stratford’s alleged anonymity is in many ways its secret asset. This part of London is close to a blank canvass. It would be renewed by the arrival of the Games in a manner that no section of any city selected to organise the Olympics in the past century has been. A brief glance at the blueprint prepared by Lord Coe and his team should be enough to ward off the sniping of the critics. This is a fundamentally viable, even visionary, plan that would transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
The only issue then is whether the IOC has the imagination to acknowledge what is in front of it. Paris has been the favourite from the start but London is catching her. Atlanta overtook Athens at the last to seize the 1996 nomination and Sydney pipped Beijing at the post in an unexpected triumph four years later.
London can do it and London should do it because, above all else, London would do it better.
