There are an awful lot of bad things to be said about the Tour de France. There are even more bad things to be said about the Olympic Games and for two years we have been deafened by them. You can’t mention the Olympics without raising howls of anguish, anxiety and anger. The London Games are too awful to contemplate.

So let’s start with the Tour. Like the Roses cricket match, it’s got rien to do with nous. We don’t understand the sport, don’t have a clue about its tactics. A few of us may be aware that it’s something to do with air resistance, but the key points of stage racing pass us by.

So do the race’s great traditions. Most sports enthusiasts could, at a push, name the winner of the past eight Tours. These are, of course, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, and that bloke that got done for drugs. We all know that professional cycling in general, and the Tour de France in particular, is addled with drugs; none but a few buffs could name last year’s King of the Mountains (Michael Rasmussen, of course).

It’s an alien world, a discredited event, an incomprehensible sport. So when they decided to hold the first two days of the Tour in England, what do you think happened? The English lined the roads ten-deep and cheered. Those at the back saw no more than a magic carpet of many colours. But we turned out in force. Estimates of the total go up to two million, which is newspaper-speak for an awful lot. Why? Because the Tour de France has a mystique. Because in England, the Tour has a rarity value. Here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the Tour and England turned out to genuflect, to get the T-shirt, to enjoy the party.

All of which demonstrates beyond doubt that the Olympic Games of 2012 will be the most outrageous success. Mystique, rarity value, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the Games can’t fail. All right, all right, I know. This is not a fashionable view. We are all supposed to show our independence of mind by saying that the Olympics are a millstone, a folly, an idiocy, an insupportable burden on poor Londoners. Heigh-ho.

I predicted it all, two years ago almost to the day. It’s bad form to quote oneself, I know, but on July 6, 2005, the day London got the Games, I wrote: “Seven years of whingeing, rows, misery, scandals, spin, claptrap, disasters, backbiting and sulking will be followed by the greatest celebration of life that London has seen, that Britain has seen, that the world has seen.” We’ve still got five years of whingeing to go.

In yesterday’s Times, four sports blokes were asked about Tony Blair’s record on sport. Three said nothing but bad things; and none mentioned the Olympic Games, in which Blair played a vital part. That’s because the Olympic Games is a Bad Thing and will remain so for another five years.

But after that, as the lesson of the Tour de France shows, we will turn up in millions. There are ten million tickets available for the Games of 2012. There are also the free shows – two marathons, the cyclists’ road race, the triathlon. Millions will watch them: we love an occasion.

Every year, the roads are solid for the London Marathon. Advice to any first-time runner: put your name on your T-shirt. My old friend Chris told me of the almost magical sensation as he went into the unknown at 20 miles. Go on, Chris! You can do it! And Chris, sweating like a pig and roaring defiance at the world, found the strength and the will to complete. It was a profound experience for him and, in lesser measure, for those who spurred him on.

The 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta are remembered for many things, most of them bad – bombs, rednecks, chaos, transport – but every venue was packed. Most people knew little about the sports they were watching, but hey, this was the Olympics. You had to be there. At the show jumping, when a horse jumped a fence, they whooped.

In Sydney, it was still better. I remember, in particular, the dressage, performed before 10,000 people, many of them – this being an outdoor nation – very knowledgeable, applauding each piaffe and passage in the wonderful duel between Bonfire and Rembrandt. Every event at these wonderful Games was packed and the great performances were cheered, even if they weren’t Australian. And in the seven years before the Sydney Games began, no one in Sydney did anything but whinge.

Athens was short on audience, but London won’t be. Great Britain is very good at great sporting events: they are well-run and well-attended. I spent the past two weeks at Wimbledon and I should know. If you want me to whinge about the weather, I will, because some of it was uphill going, but what a final. If there is a better piece of sport this year – this side of the Beijing Olympics of 2008 – I’ll be pretty amazed. It was all triumphantly worth it.

I’m not gong to debate matters such as cost and financing and legacy. Rather, I’d like to point out that there are two equal and opposite forces in the national psyche – or perhaps I mean the human psyche. The first is a love of whingeing, moaning and begrudging. Whingeing is cool – it shows you know what’s going on, that you’re in touch, that you’re not going to get fooled again. But in the same nation, and frequently in the same breast, lies the conflicting emotion. Isn’t this great? Isn’t this wonderful? Isn’t it amazing the way truly amazing sport is so truly amazing? Let’s get out there and be part of it, because it may be the best thing we’ve ever seen.

So let’s brace ourselves for another five years of whingeing. We won’t be reading many headlines about “Olympic Preparations Go Jolly Well” and “Stadium On Time” and “Money Well Spent”. But remember all the – fully justified – negative stuff about the new Wembley Stadium? Now Wembley is up and running, everybody keeps saying how lucky we are to have it.

Ah, the knockers, the sneerers, the begrudgers, the life-deniers: how I loathe them all in whatever walk of life I find them in. Breathless naivety is not the answer to life’s problems, but a cynical, know-it-all, would-be-wise moaning and carping is a far more loathsome thing, utterly destructive of life and spirit.

But it is the sneerers who will be listened to over the next five years. They will be supported and cherished and listened to and believed in. And then the Olympic Games will start and they will vanish like a puff of smoke, as if they had never been, and once again the people will line the streets in their millions and cheer.