| Friday, July 27, 2012 10:53 AM

Given I am going to be there, it behoves me to be somewhat informed so I am reading up a storm about the Olympics. I tell you what excites me most, and it has nothing to do with the sport - renewal or indeed enhancement.

London it would seem is going to be an immeasurably better city because it won the right to host the games. They all say that of course but it doesn't often happen. Greece is a good example. Nothing they built for the games in Athens ever got used again. The weeds grew, you could smell the dereliction and that's before they went completely bust. It’s widely accepted Barcelona got it right. They redid vast parts of the city. The waterfront got a magical make over and tourist numbers went from something like two million a year to 12 million.

London of course couldn't afford the games. That was some of the reading I did. Vanity Fair did a very nice piece on how Blair wavered back and forward like a kid at a dairy who couldn't work out what to spend his pocket money on. When they were bidding, he was preoccupied with the Iraq war and worried (quite rightly) what sort of message it would send. The upside was it was a message of positivity, that Britain could bid and be the best. But the flipside was if you have the money for that, why don't you have the money for some decent equipment to stop our boys getting blown up in Basra.

Anyway he was talked into it, they won it and the rest is history. Well history up until this point. Much is still to be judged because getting the games is one hurdle, running them so the Olympic Secretary uses some phrase like ‘the best’ or ‘brilliant’ is the next one. But the big one, the really big one, is the legacy. After all, and let’s be honest, by the end of August all this will be but a memory. It's a great sporting event but so is the world cup and there’s always another one coming. The great trick is to have the investment and the work pay off for you forever. In that aspect from my reading they just might be on to something.

Sustainability is a big part of it but the down side of it is that although they didn't ruin the earth building it all, they also fold it up and pack it away afterwards. London is folding up and packing away a lot. But some of it they’re not and the bits they’re not look spectacular. Not just stadia (which by the way largely have tenants moving in afterwards) but the art installations. There are lots of them all over the place. I won’t describe them today but wait until I get to London and go see them. I’ll bore you witless with detail. I love art installations. Big ones, permanent ones, ones that inspire and get reaction. London’s outdone itself on that front.

That's before you get to the bit where they’ve taken a polluted wasteland and given it new life. A major chunk of the city that was filthy, dead and poisoned is now alive and beautiful and functioning. That alone is worth the price of the games.

Photo: PhotoSport