Ten years on from the flag-draped fever dream of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony and the golden night of Saturday 4 August, what have we got left from London 2012?
nd what a time it was, and what a time. What a deeply – looking back now, almost exactly 10 years on – unutterably strange time. If the London 2012 Olympics had a moment of optimum energy, a thermal peak, it would be 9.46pm on Saturday 4 August in the swooping eves of the Olympic Stadium.
As Farah crossed the line the nurses and sailors spontaneously embraced, caught in a moment of full-on VE-Day abandon, as though the flag-draped fever dream of– 5,000 spitfire pilots breakdancing to Elgar; Paddington Bear singing Let It Be inside a giant cheddar cheese – had unexpectedly come to life. And in that moment it seemed that everything was good and fine and well and would always be; that this was the start not the end of something.
Jessica Ennis wins gold for Britain in the women’s heptathlon and celebrates after crossing the line in the final event, the 800m.It is no secret that “legacy” is a construct of the age of Big Corporate Sport, a sales pitch designed to package in acceptable form the vast public expense required to stage these events. Legacy is built into the model, another strand of vote-gathering self-promotion. And yet even the word itself has a weird ring. Legacies are capricious things.
Part of the problem in getting a clear sight of this thing is that the claims made on sport’s behalf are routinely absurd. InTony Blair was already telling the International Olympic Committee: “Our vision is to see millions more young people across the world participating in sport and improving their lives. London has the power to make that happen. It is a city with a voice that talks to young people.
So looking back we learned that by 2022 Britain will be one of the leading Olympic nations . The UK will also be one of the best places in the world to stage events .
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