Over There: The London Olympics

There was that awful sinking feeling at the closing ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. You might have experienced the same, though you have probably tried your best to forget it. The London bus, the dancers with umbrellas, David Beckham booting a ball. Always David Beckham. Now and for eternity, it would seem.

There was a terrible sense of foreboding, that the London display hinted of a village fete Olympics to come, replete with mad Boris waving a flag. Danny Boyle will, though, presumably serve up more of the millionaire than the Mumbai slum for the opening ceremony. We are about to find out. And personally, I can't wait.

Individual Olympics are etched in the memory, mine at any rate, because of specific performances or where they were watched. 1964: Lynn Davies and Mary Rand leading the world in jumping. 1968: Beamon leaving Davies wondering why he should bother, but also Hemery gold, world record. 1972: coming home from what had been more or less an all-nighter, slumping on the sofa and listening in total shock to a commentary David Coleman could never have expected to have to have given. 1980 and 1984, both political Games but with the glory of Wells, Coe, Ovett, Thompson. Thompson especially, whistling through the national anthem. 1988: in Crete watching Ben Johnson. 1992: in France watching Linford Christie.

Thereafter the Games started to mean less. Like Montreal in 1976, they were mainly a blur, save for Cathy Freeman in Sydney. But 2012 is different. Very different. It is our Games. Ours, but not ours. They're over there, not over here.

I am in the wrong place. I know I'm in the wrong place. I am in the wrong place for being able to experience a cliché; once in a lifetime, though for some the Games aren't once in a lifetime. There are those who were around in 1948 and who have even taken an active part, such as Austin Playfoot, who passed the Olympic flame to my father 64 years ago.

That link is strong enough to give the Games added personal meaning, as also does the location; the Olympic stadium is a mile or so away from my mother's manor in the East End. I know I should be there, but I know why I am not: the rigmarole of applying for tickets. My brother-in-law's brother knew far better than most how to get round it. He applied by post and has a ticket for the men's 100 metres final.

The discussion of the London Olympics here, as in the UK, has revolved around the familiar arguments. Of course the Games are an extravagance, but then humankind is prone to extravagance, unless it happens to live in North Korea, and even there the nutters who run the place indulge in their own bizarre extravagances. Like governments, the British Olympic Association and the International Olympic Committee are guilty of highly dubious extravagances, so are all the rest of us. Extravagance appeals to the inner Ferrari-owner in all of us.

Yet, the discussion which is conducted in Mallorca is, like many other aspects of life in Britain, somehow artificial. It is remote and third-hand. The spend on the Olympics, issues of security, issues of transport, issues of legacy. None of them actually matter. Not when you don't live there. The discussion is artificial also in its focus on the man-made, on the physical manifestations of the Games. It neglects the natural, the personal, the meaning of the Games. And for some, myself included, London has meaning. So, there is a poignancy in not being there, of being only a distant observer of a party which one should be attending.

Great events only come around very occasionally, if at all. For all the naysaying, the Olympics is a great event. Its history is filled with the memorable, some of which, like Munich, would be better for there not being the memory. When Jacques Rogge uttered those words - "that the Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of London" - there was no feeling of jingoistic pride but instead a breathtaking shiver of shocked connection. A connection with London and with all that the Games, in their best ways, have come to represent and have to offer. And a connection also with the momentous.

So, don't let us down. Don't let there be any dancers with umbrellas. Don't let there be the 257 bus which has taken a wrong turning. But there will be, as there always is, David Beckham. Beckham, the eternal Olympic fame. Oh well, he deserves his moment, as do all the others.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.