As we approach the final countdown to London 2012, life here on the Olympic Park is running particularly smoothly, despite reports you may have seen on the television or read in the newspapers.

Security has unsurprisingly stolen most of the headlines due to the "humiliating shambles" that saw contractor G4S fail to recruit enough personnel to adequately provide protection for London 2012.

The issue saw the Government forced to step in and commit 3,500 military personnel to fill the security void for the Games following orders from Home Secretary Theresa May.

The move caused shockwaves across the UK, but in the grand scheme of all things London 2012, it is hardly a problem because all it actually means is that highly trained soldiers have replaced members of the British public who would have been given only the most basic of training.

If the worst happens during the Olympics, I know who I would rather have on hand. Every time I have been through the security checkpoint to get onto the Olympic Park, the military personnel have been smiling, polite, friendly and give the impression they are fully enjoying the experience of being part of the greatest sporting event on the planet.

Cornflowers surrounding the Olympic Stadium on the Olympic Park

Their demeanour is perhaps not overly surprising given that the Olympic Park is finally starting to look like the stunning location we all hoped it would be, after several years of building work on what was formerly rotting wasteland in East London.

I have for some time been a little underwhelmed with the venues of the Olympic Park, partly because I've spent so much time on it in the past few months during the test event series and partly because it always looked a little dull.

However, in the past few days, the predominantly purple and blue "look and feel" of London 2012 has been added, the flowers have started blooming and nearly all the ugly cranes and tractors used during the construction period have disappeared leaving something rather magnificent in their place.

On a recent media tour of the Olympic Park, led by London 2012 head of sustainability David Stubbs, several of my media colleagues and I were taken around the green parklands a short distance away from the Velodrome.

Wasteland near the Olympic Stadium in early 2011

"We have cleaned up formerly industrial land, much of it contaminated, and opened up inaccessible riverbanks to create a new great park that will be enjoyed by people and wildlife for generations to come," Stubbs explained.

It is a wonderful addition to the greenest Olympic Park in history and seems almost magical when you compare it with the view described by London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe when the city was bidding for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"I was basically standing on a tower block half a mile from the Olympic Parking with the International Olympic Committee [IOC] alongside me looking rather perplexed," Coe told me in an interview recently.

"I said to them, 'You see that 50-foot mountain of rotting fridges, we're going to put an Aquatics Centre there'.

"I felt like a dodgy timeshare salesman as I tried to sell the vision for London 2012 back then."

General view of the Olympic Park a week before the Games begin

Of course, we all know it ended happily as Coe spearheaded the London 2012 bid to victory in Singapore in 2005 before being appointed Organising Committee chairman and leading us successfully to this point.

Business has now really picked up with the arrival in London of IOC President Jacques Rogge, the most powerful man in sport, and the next few days will see the finishing touches put on what will undoubtedly be one of the greatest Games of all time.

It will be athletes like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Jessica Ennis who become the stars of these Games and who create a special kind of history in the iconic venues on the Olympic Park.

But it must not be forgotten how far, in such a short space of time, the piece of land in Stratford has come to look so truly resplendent – and come the Games, it will provide the perfect backdrop for the world's best athletes to become true sporting icons too.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

If we don't get a glimpse of a few pearly kings and queens in the London 2012 Opening Ceremony then, cor blimey guvnor, you can knock me down wiv a fevver. These, after all, are the Games slap bang in the Cockney manor.

For a small, but interested party of media who gathered at the Carpenters Arms this week, just a few hundred yards down Cambridge Heath Road from Bethnal Green tube station, there was an opportunity to get a thorough preview of all things Cockney in the most London Olympic Borough of all – Tower Hamlets. (And, by-the-by, to consume a heavenly pie and mash. I couldn't get there fast enough.)

The self-proclaimed "gateway to the London 2012 Olympic Games" – whose Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, was in attendance for what was billed as a "Traditional Cockney Welcome" – has a total of 127 different languages spoken within its boundaries, a reflection of the enormously diverse influx of nationalities to the area in the last half century. And the 127th, of course, is Cockney.

But what is Cockney? That, would you Adam and Eve, is not a simple question to answer. One of the earliest recorded references is in William Langland's 1362 blockbuster The Vision Of William Concerning Piers Plowman (I read it myself about 150 years ago and can recommend the bit about the Seven Deadly Sins) where the phrase "coken" (of cocks) and "ey" (egg) occurred – which is, a reference to a cock's egg.

Cockney rhyming slang for money


There was a reference too in Chaucer's Reeve's Tale, around 1386, to a "cokenay", which was in this context "a child tenderly brought up, and effeminate fellow, a milksop". As our guest academic, Dr Sue Fox – a linguist from nearby Queen Mary, University of London – explained – a little awkwardly in the circumstances – the word Cockney was originally a shorthand reference to "an individual of a kind that did not fit in society".

Over the years, she added, the term Cockney has come to refer both to a group of people – generally, working class Londoners predominantly from the East End – and a language, the distinguishing and ever-changing characteristics of which are currently engaging her full attention as she seeks to document a living culture in the process of change.

"In the last five decades Cockney has probably undergone more rapid change than at any time in its long history," she said. "Which isn't surprising given the vast social and economic redevelopment of the traditional dialect area."

So what are the distinguishing characteristics of Cockney speech? Dr Fox gave us a swift tour of vowels and consonants to illustrate the general theme. Thus: "face" is pronounced "feice"; "mouth: is "maarf"; "think" is "fink"; "father" is "farverr"; and "isn't" is "ain't".

By this time, the scholarly doctor was beginning to get into the swing of things. "So if I wanted to say I hadn't got any money, I would say 'I ain't got no money'".

Traditional cockney pie and mash shop in London's East End 

"You're right there, girl," chimed in a Cockney voice from the back (the classic position for a Cockney voice to chime in from, of course). "I ain't got no bees-and-'unny neither..."

So let's stop the narrative there for a moment. Let's go no furver. This was the voice of Jimmy Jukes, whose suit of many buttons and sequins proclaimed him Pearly King of Bermondsey. Jukes, large and affable, is a man with whom, nevertheless, you would not mess. And here was a classic example of Cockney rhyming slang – "bees and honey", that is, "money".

After the good doctor had concluded and begun a series of interviews with film crews from around the world, Mr Jukes was good enough to expand on the "So What Is Cockney Then?" front.

"Cockney was a phrase for a misshapen egg long ago," he said. "As it was misshapen, it was assumed it had been laid by a cock. But cocks don't lay eggs – hens lay eggs. So it was a bit of an urban myth to start with.

"The whole business of pearly kings and queens was a bit of a mickey-take to start off with. Back when it started, a lot of people in the East End really didn't have any money. But it meant you could get a dirty old suit and put a load of buttons on it and then start giving it a bit of a show. That's where the phrase 'Flash Harry' comes from – your 'Flash' is the line of the buttons on the edge of your trousers." At which point he hitched his own leg onto the barstool, showing off a constellation of buttons.

So, one wondered (that was me wondering), can anyone introduce new Cockney slang? Or do they have to run it past the pearly kings and queens, with their family histories, first? Answer – you can't stop the tide of invention.

Pearly king, Jimmy Jukes

"People can say what they want," said Jukes, a Cockney entertainer who used to work on the Waterloo flower stall with Great Train robber Buster Edwards who featured in the film Buster, and who indeed appeared on a stall in the film along with the man playing Edwards, Phil Collins. (Whatever happened to him?)

"Some of the youngsters have started saying 'Armani' instead of 'sarni' [sandwich]. There are new words coming in all the time."

So, to be proper slang, does a new phrase have to conform to what, if you were writing an academic paper on the subject, you might call the Classic Cockney pattern? That is, using a word that associates with another word which is a rhyme to the word you mean – such as "apples", as in "apples and pears", rhyming with "stairs", or "dog", as in "dog and bone", rhyming with "phone"?

Well no. It doesn't. "You get people now saying 'You're 'avin' a giraffe' – meaning 'laugh'," Jukes adds. And there are other pieces of slang that don't even rhyme. For instance, if you wander off on your own, you have "done a Captain Oates" – a reference to the frostbitten and barely functioning Antarctic explorer who walked out of the main tent and into a blizzard so as not to be a burden to his friends. Or you might have a "George Cannon" – that is, a car crash. Don't ask. I don't know.

The slang, Jukes adds, was partly brought in as a kind of code among costermongers and market traders so they could communicate with each other without being obvious. "For instance," he said, "if you were on a fish stall, and your boss said to you 'Give him the d-lo', that would mean you giving the customer the old fish – which is d-lo backwards. And he wouldn't know what was going on."

Jukes is suitably mysterious about what, if any connection the pearly kings and queens might be about to have with the impending Games. He is more than happy to talk about the influence of sporting figures on Cockney rhyming slang, however. The problem is, there is no great sporting influence.

Pearly kings and queens celebrate their annual Costermonger's Harvest Festival in London

"You've got 'Bobby Moore', which is a score – £20," he said. There has also been a recent alternative to the old Ruby Murray – curry slang. For younger Cockneys, curry is now apparently an Andy Murray.

Still, the sporting lexicon is a little bare down Stepney and Bethnal Green way. Maybe things will change if Jet wins another Decrepit in the London. (Jet Plane: Usain; Decrepit and Old: Gold: London Palladium: Stadium.) All right then. Make your own up.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames.

Credit for image of Jimmy Jukes: London-In-Sight Blog 

Archery – rain; clay shooting – heavy rains, high winds; cycling – track usually flooded; football – misty and uncomfortable; lacrosse – a little hail. No, not the weather forecast for events at London 2012 (unless through unhappy coincidence).

These are the conditions actually faced by competitors the first time the Olympic Games came to London, 104 years ago. Admittedly, the events in those long-ago Games were spaced over several months.

Those hail stones in the lacrosse, for example, fell on October 24, not altogether surprising. But even summer events such as tennis, athletics and, as we have seen, cycling, had to cope with their fair share of rain.

A wonderful action shot in the Official Report of this, the fourth Modern Olympiad, shows gold medallist Ralph Rose of the United States putting the "weight", or shot, resplendent in cricket cap, while a smartly dressed official looks on sheltered by an umbrella.

"Only bad weather prevented a wonderful performance being registered by Rose", the report notes.

In cycling, the track was "under water in parts" when the 17 riders appeared for "The Prince of Wales's Cup for a hundred kilometres", with one competitor, JH Bishop, "wearing goggles to protect his eyes from the grit and rain".

In archery, which took place on July 17 and 18, the rain on day one was "bad", with the ladies' competition immediately disrupted as archers had to "fly for shelter". Competitors also had to allow for "very tricky eddies" from the gusting winds.

Ralph Rose, of the United States, putting the "weight" at a rainy Games

I think I know what that means, but I must admit that both me and my Oxford English Dictionary have been flummoxed by the "heavy smirr of rain" said to have affected a 12-metre yacht race staged in August on the Clyde.

In the tennis, played at Wimbledon in early July, one semi-final of the men's doubles was adjourned "with the players dripping wet".

Two events in particular stand out for the supreme awfulness of the weather and the consequences of the unfavourable conditions.

The clay bird shooting competition at Uxendon, between Wembley Park and Harrow, from July 8 to 11, was beset by "wretched" weather – a particular pity as a new Metropolitan Line station had been constructed and opened just a few weeks before the event.

"Heavy rains, high winds and changeable light made shooting difficult", the Official Report recounts. It goes on: "The specially constructed trench at Uxendon had, by careful planning, been placed so that the July sunlight should not shine in the eyes of the shooters. A more necessary precaution in the dark weather experienced was to insure [sic] that the birds should be clearly visible".

The clays were consequently whitewashed prior to use, giving them "a black and white magpie appearance".

It is a comment, no doubt, on the very different security arrangements in place then and now that cartridges were said to be on sale at the grounds.

The Duke of Westminster's Wolseley-Siddeley competes in the motor-boating event

Perhaps worst of all, however, were the conditions facing competitors in the motor-boat racing on Southampton Water on August 28 and 29.

"A strong gale was blowing from the south-west," notes the report, "with constant downpours of rain, and the heavy sea running made racing an enterprise of some considerable risk, and robbed it of all its enjoyment, except to the most confirmed enthusiasts. That any competitors started at all was a strong testimony to their pluck and determination".

An interesting explanation was given as to why it was "unfortunately impossible" to postpone the racing to await better conditions. The fixture had originally been made for the middle of July, the report states, "and postponed to allow of the return from America of the Duke of Westminster's crack forty-footer, Wolseley-Siddeley, which had gone over to challenge for the British International Cup – at present held by the United States".

Having established a commanding lead, Wolseley-Siddeley looked on course to win a gold medal, but, as the report puts it, "it was not to be. The tide was rather past half-ebb, and Wolseley-Siddeley getting too close to Hamble Spit went high and dry on the soft mud, and so eliminated herself from the contest".

Whatever hazards lie in store for the athletes of 2012, soft mud at Hamble Spit, one feels, is unlikely to inconvenience them unduly.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed by clicking here. 

Just one minute. There will be 24,480 of them during the Olympics this summer. Yet apparently the world cannot make time to spare just one for the memory of the 11 Israelis and a German who were killed after a stand-off with a Palestinian terrorist organisation 40 years ago at the Munich Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been consistent in its rejection of an attempt by campaigners to have a minute's silence during the Opening Ceremony of London 2012 for the Israeli athletes.

Ankie Spitzer, wife of Andre, one of the 11 and a fencing coach, has bravely taken on the IOC in a bid to have the memory of her husband and his colleagues honoured at the Opening Ceremony of London 2012.

The IOC though, are happy with what they do already. In fairness, they do have a permanent memorial in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, whilst the IOC President always attends an event held by the Israeli Olympic Committee at each Games.

But why not have a minute's silence? What is everyone so scared of? As the Israeli member of the IOC, Alex Gilady has previously told the BBC "We must consider what this could do to other members of the delegations that are hostile to Israel".

No-one wants to say it because it's always easier to skirt around difficult political issues than address them directly, but that is basically the tactful and diplomatic way of avoiding saying "It brings up the issue of Israel-Palestine".

But this has absolutely nothing to do with that conflict or politics whatsoever. Or perhaps more pertinently, for those calling for a minute's silence it has nothing to do with politics. One suspects those opposing it have political interests very much at the front of their minds.

The infamous 1972 Munich Olympics massacre

And who exactly would object to such a memorial?

It is certainly not Britain, nor the United States, Germany, Belgium and Australia, all of whom have supported the campaign. Neither would Italy, where 140 Parliamentarians this week signed a letter calling for the gesture. Probably not Jordan either, whose then King Hussein denounced the murders as a "savage crime against civilization". The leader of one of the only two Arab nations who recognise Israel's right to exist, he was also the only leader of another country in the region to condemn the attacks.

Those objecting probably include Iran, whose athletes are ordered not to compete against Israelis, flagrantly ignoring the spirit of the Olympics. And it may also include some of the 10 Arab nations who refused to fly their flags at half-mast like all the other countries at the memorial in Munich following the tragedy.

But this should not be about Israel. It should be about 11 athletes who were in Munich to compete in a sport they loved and in doing so promote the Olympic ideals. Those countries who did not lower their flags in Munich betrayed those values.

As Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, has put it: "The IOC is treating this as an internal Israeli matter but [the massacre] is of concern to the whole Olympic Family, it was an onslaught on the whole Olympic ideal. But perhaps [the IOC] thinks anything to do with Israel is controversial. It is not a display of great courage and integrity."

The 11 victims of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre

Palmor is right. Sure, it is probable certain countries will be offended by the memorial, prompting the protests about the importance of the Movement's unity. Yet the participation of a Syrian showjumper who shows no concern that his country's leadership is murdering innocent civilians it is meant to protect does not threaten such unity?

And any country taking offence to a memorial for 11 representatives of the Israeli team which went to Munich and were callously murdered for no other reason than their nationality cannot possibly claim with a straight face that their values are really aligned with those of the Olympic Movement. Is this what Baron Pierre de Coubertin envisaged? For a memorial for murdered athletes to be blocked by politics? The terrorists who murdered those athletes in 1972 were attacking the ancient Olympic concept of putting aside conflict to come together and compete in a sporting arena. The minute's silence would be a perfect way for the Olympic Movement to stick two fingers up at those terrorists and stand up for its values. Instead, it is passively shrugging its shoulders at that offer.

A scene from the Olympic Village during the 1972 Munich Massacre

This is nothing short of wilful or ignorant cowardice, and it is all the more tragic considering the bravery of the slain. After the Black September group scaled the fence of the Olympic Village in Munich, the Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg, facing armed terrorists, fought back. He was shot in the cheek for his troubles. When forced to help them find his compatriots, he lied about where some were residing. He led them to where the Israeli weightlifters and wrestlers were staying instead in the hope that with their strength they could fend off the terrorists. When that plan failed, the injured Weinberg again fought back, knocking a terrorist unconscious and allowing a wrestler to run to safety. His bravery cost him his life. And yet we cannot find a minute's silence for him and the other 11 victims? Really?

Guri, Weinberg's son, put it best. "We want a moment of silence for 11 athletes who were part of the Olympic Family the IOC always talks and talks about," he said. "We do not want it for 11 Israelis or 11 Jews or 11 politicians. Just athletes."

It just needs one minute. There are 40 pages in the Host City contract for the Games with all kinds of stipulations. A minute's silence will not be difficult to enforce. And besides, so what if some countries object and threaten the Olympic unity? What exactly will they do: boycott the Games, withdraw from the Olympic Family? If that is their reaction, then good riddance to them – they will not be missed. Those opposed to the minute's silence have clearly missed the point of the most important three words in this whole debate - excellence, friendship and respect.

David Gold is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

The Olympics has a habit of exposing truths about their host countries.

I'm thinking about the dash to get things finished for Athens 2004 and the glimpses of an authoritarian Chinese state at Beijing 2008.

In similar vein, the recent M4 and G4S affairs have started to paint what for my money is an all too eloquent picture of the less presentable side of the country about to welcome the world to London 2012: a land of creaking infrastructure and private contractors who make big promises that they then struggle to deliver.

But the identity of the host city can also tell you a lot about where the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) priorities lie.

Athens presented an opportunity to highlight the Olympic Movement's historical heritage, unparalleled among sporting bodies; Beijing was about business; part of London's appeal was its unique sporting pedigree, with a bid leader, Sebastian Coe, among the most iconic of all Olympic athletes and its knowledgeable, enthusiastic and numerous legions of sports fans, and the promise they held out for jam-packed venues and a genuinely spine-tingling atmosphere.

Reality, of course, does not always fall into line: Athens' unique historical associations ended up being overshadowed by the very modern issue of dope testing; Beijing rather unexpectedly gazumped London by serving up a Games in which the Olympic Movement's core business of sport surged back centre stage thanks to the exploits of Usain Bolt (pictured below, left), Michael Phelps, the GB cycling team and others.

The performances of Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals, helped make Beijing an outstanding success

This time, I am starting to wonder whether the subject that leaps unbidden to the fore might not be the IOC itself. Specifically, whether the organisation has not grown a teensy bit complacent and out of touch in what are hard – and unpredictable – times for many.

You can well understand how this might have happened.

Over the past four years, as many businesses have struggled, the Olympic Movement has generated more revenue than ever before – more than $7.5 billion (£4.8 billion/€6.1 billion), by my estimation, from its four main commercial revenue streams of broadcasting rights (pictured below), sponsorship, ticketing and licensing.

The races for the 2012 and 2016 Summer Games – the latter won by Rio de Janeiro – featured stellar line-ups of leading world cities all vying to stage the IOC's flagship event.

And while other sports governing bodies, notably football's FIFA, have wallowed in all manner of corporate governance questions, the IOC has demonstrably put its house in order and is now seen as something of a beacon of creditable practice in an admittedly not overpoweringly strong field.

Just lately, though, I have detected a few signs suggesting that the 105 distinguished members of sport's most exclusive club might need to do more to remind people what a positive force the Movement can be.

The IOC could find itself under the spotlight like never before during London 2012

For one thing, the race for the 2020 Games did not, I think it is fair to say, attract quite as exciting a field as its two predecessors.

What is more, the IOC eliminated two credible, if somewhat controversial, bidders at the intermediate Applicant Cities stage, leaving just three in the run-off: Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo.

The clamour around the Olympic sponsors, along with the measures needed to enforce their exclusivity, seems to grow louder with every Games.

Quite a few of them are brands with one issue or another, which explains partly why they are prepared to pay tens of millions of dollars to wrap themselves in the Olympic Movement's wholesome five-ringed cloak.

The problem for the Movement could come if the push-me, pull-you dynamic inherent in such arrangements starts to infuse the five-ring logo with characteristics associated with the sponsoring brands, rather than sprinkling those brands with Olympic magic.

With broadcasting rights raising close to $4 billion (£2.6 billion/€3.3 billion) in the current Olympic quadrennium, you might feel entitled to ask whether the Games could not now be staged without commercial sponsorship.

The realistic answer is probably no, since even if the Games themselves could be funded, distributions to sports bodies would no doubt fall.

What future for the Olympic Movement in the "Facebook Age"?

It is hard not to feel, though, that where sponsorship is concerned fewer would in future be better.

One of the Games' most valuable functions, or so it has always seemed to me, is the way they act as a vehicle to increase understanding between people from different cultures.

Since Beijing, however, the wildfire spread of social media has made it far easier, and essentially cost-free, for people from all over the world to communicate as frequently as they wish, albeit often in a fairly superficial way.

This raises the question of whether that valuable function performed by the Games is being superceded: do we still need the Olympics to bring people together in the Facebook age (pictured above)?

I don't think it is yet possible to answer this question – after all, if the Games provide subject matter, as they assuredly will, for myriad globe-straddling conversations, then their role as a harbinger of international understanding might conceivably be reinforced.

What is clear is that the game has changed.

And then there is the security issue, the examination that no Olympic host dare flunk.

In a world where desperate/ultra-committed people are prepared to blow themselves up or even fly planes into prominent buildings, it is hardly surprising that security too seems to get costlier and more rigorous/intrusive with each edition of the Games that passes.

There is little anyone can do about this in the short term.

It does, though, put an onus on those responsible for the event that requires so much protection to keep explaining what it is about said event which makes it so valuable that all the associated hassle is worth it.

So I hope that IOC members will use as much as possible of their time in London to step out of the sanctuary of their swish Park Lane hotel and evangelise for the great Movement that they represent.

The world is a slightly better place for having the Olympic Games, but the case is not so strong as to be self-evident.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 FIFA World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 FIFA World Cup. Access Owen's Twitter feed here. 

For a few moments, before the two-strong – if that is the correct phrase – British Virgin Islands (IVB) Olympic team stepped forward for the first of what will be 204 Welcoming Ceremonies in the Games Village (not all for them, of course) the scene resembled something out of the old Patrick McGoohan TV series The Prisoner.

Frozen in wait for them, a tableau of motleyed fools – in the medieval sense, that is – from the National Youth Theatre (NYT), bursting with flexibility and amiability. Some of the performers were in yellow and green, others in Union flag tops and tartan kilts, others in blue and white. There were young men in yellow bowler hats, there were what resembled British centurions, with punk-style Mohican wigs. And they were all waiting for the small party – two tracksuited athletes, a couple of tracksuited officials and perhaps 20 smartly dressed men and women tracking behind them – who stood behind a placard inscribed with the letters IVB.

There was, it has to be said, something faintly menacing about the scene as the middle rank of thespians went down to their imaginary marks, and the whole assembled crew shouted out a countdown in French – Trois! Deux! Un! – before the tension broke into a rendition of that most fey of ditties, I Want To Ride My Bicycle, by Queen. Naturally, bicycles soon wheeled in upon the uncertainly advancing team.

The two athletes – 100 metres runners J'Maal Alexander (pictured below arriving at Heathrow) and Tahesia Harrigan-Scott – both smiled a little uneasily as the wheeling, singing and acrobatics went on around them, perhaps feeling like theatregoers who had seated themselves too close to the front at a production keen on audience participation.


It soon became clear to the visiting party that their role was to stand their ground as the performance went on around them. The whole scene, meanwhile, was being watched by around a couple of hundred interested volunteers and a handful of media representatives. The Virgin Islanders held up their mobile phones to picture the spectators doing the same thing to them. Truly, the Interactive Games have arrived.

Frankly, had I just arrived off the plane from the British Virgin Islands I would just want to get straight to my accommodation for a shower and a kip rather than finding myself in the middle of theatrics. But any rising feelings of sympathy were quelled by the news that this was timing of the British Virgin Islanders' own choosing.

Both Harrigan-Scott (pictured below, second left) and Alexander, it transpired, had been staying with host families in the small Hertfordshire village of Aston, near Stevenage, before this official arrival.


Before too long there was an invitation to welcome the Village Mayor (Deputy Mayor in fact) Dame Tessa Jowell. The woman who had been so instrumental in persuading Tony Blair that the Olympics was a "good idea" was warmly welcoming herself, inviting the Islands' NOC representative up onto the dais beside her to put his monicker on a declaration of support for the Olympic Truce. Not really much of an option to that invitation.

And then, unexpectedly, Seb Coe turned up to add his words of welcome as chairman of the Organising Committee. After making the point that he did not expect to be performing a similar function at the remaining 203 Welcoming Ceremonies, he added a heartfelt thank-you to the team for being in London before posing for pictures with the entire IVB team arranged on either side of him.

For Coe, who has cut a gaunt figure on TV in recent days as news of less than 100 per cent ticket sales and the G4S (is that now pronounced "Guffaws"?) debacle have played out, this little outing represented a Good Olympic Moment. "There's plenty more to come," he reassured insidethegames.

As they wandered away from their first, successful Olympic gig, two of the performers from the NYT (pictured below) reflected excitedly upon an experience that will be repeated, more or less, on many occasions in this space over the next few days.


The Athletes' Village already shows signs of occupancy – one tower has Belgian flags on it, while another has a descending sequence of banners reading "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi". These other early arrivals will soon be on the rota for their own Official Welcomes as the 140 NYT performers, who are split into two groups, prepare for their own relatively long run.

"It's exciting," said Matthew Morrison, an NYT member from Mansfield. "I am still getting my breath back." Fellow performer Romy Alexander, from Worcester, explained that around 4,000 NYT members had entered two rounds of auditions for the 140 available places. The motleyed collection have already won their own Olympic competition.

For Coe, this all-singing, all-dancing exuberance was a world away from his own first taste of the Olympics – at the boycotted Games of Moscow in 1980. "My first welcome?" he reflected. "We had some of our property confiscated by security staff. I think I had something subversive like The Spectator in my luggage."

Coe added: "After three days I plucked up the courage to ask my 'minder' where the nearest nightclub was. He told me 'Helsinki'."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames.

In ten days we'll be celebrating the start of the greatest show on earth as the London 2012 Olympics gets underway. The Games will be fantastic, but what happens to community sport in 2012 and beyond is just as important and the good news is that the picture is improving.

For the first time, more than 15 million people in England are playing sport every week. This is 1.3 million more than when we won the Olympic bid.

The fact that more people are choosing to play sport is the result of both strong investment and a fresh determination among those involved in community sport to make it more relevant to those that matter – the participants. It's fair to say there was a time when if you wanted to play sport you needed to fit in with what was on offer. Now sport is starting to fit in with what you need. Many sports are really listening to what people want and then delivering it.

There's a way to go, but we are starting to see the investment and change of approach having an impact on the numbers. Our latest research shows that in the last six months, 21 sports saw an increase in participation.

The Olympic and Paralympic Games are helping by putting sport in the shop window as never before. Sports that would usually struggle to attract any media attention will be beamed into millions of homes. We know that this alone won't transform grassroots sport, but it gives those sports a brilliant opportunity to reach out to more people.


Take hockey for example. They missed a trick in 1988 and since London won the bid, they've been working hard to make sure that, this time, they're in a great place to turn the inspiration of the Games into participation.  Through their Hockey Nation campaign and their version of the Torch Relay – the Big Dribble (pictured above) – they've increased participation by 25,000 in the past six months.

It's really important we make sure that people in every corner of the country benefit from the Games coming to our nation – and that's where our Olympic legacy programme Places People Play is making a difference.


Today we're announcing more than £19 million ($30 million/€24 million) of investment in 377 community sport projects the length and breadth of England through our Inspired Facilities fund.

We know that tired and run down facilities can be off-putting to and stop people taking part. By addressing this issue and investing in local facilities, we're helping more people to get involved and we're helping the dedicated people at local sports clubs who play such a vital role in community sport.

The lottery reforms have meant we've been able to put really significant amounts of money in the legacy programme. But of course, such investment doesn't simply remove the underlying challenges in sport.

We need to do more to open up sport to disabled people and reduce the gender gap. And increasing participation among young people remains a big challenge.  Up until this year we have focussed our attention on people aged 16 and over.  We now recognise that we need to start younger.  Over the decade after a person turns 16 they will leave home, move from school into further or high education, get a job, have their first serious relationship and even have their first child.  So we need to get more young people playing sport regularly before all these life-changing events happen.


We also need to be aware that from around the age of 14, they are making more and more of their own choices so we need to make sure that they are picking sport for themselves because they want to, not just because they've been told to do it.

We are working with sports themselves and other groups to attract more young people to sport and to keep them playing more regularly.  And we're seeing early evidence that this approach works. Our Sportivate programme has shown us that by letting young people choose the sport they want to play at a time and place that suits them, they're more likely to get involved and – critically – stay involved.

There's some way to go before we can say sport is something that most people do regularly but it is heading in the right direction.  We are passionate about what we do and with the will, the knowhow and the money to continue on this path, we will help more people create a sporting habit for life.

Jennie Price is the chief executive of Sport England

Adam Gemili, the newly installed world junior 100 metres champion, is by all accounts a sensible and grounded lad. Which is probably as well. For all the vast range of events in his chosen sport – now that football appears to have been well and truly consigned to What Might Have Been – there is a resonance about the short sprint which means those who excel in it excite greater and broader media interest than high performers in, say, the hammer or the long jump.

If Usain Bolt, for instance, had developed his extraordinary physique and talent in the long jump – as he probably could to huge effect – rather than the sprints, would he have achieved such a level of worldwide renown? Answer: no.

Fairly or unfairly, but indisputably historically, the 100m and the 1500m have been known as the blue riband events of the Olympic programme. And so when Britain finds itself with a rising talent within sprinting there is a natural heightening of interest – the combination of Briton and 100m means the story becomes sexy enough to start moving into column inches – either print or digital – that would otherwise belong to football coverage.

Were Gemili (pictured below) to deliver an ideal media package, he would step up sensationally to win the Olympic 100m on home soil, leaving a shocked Bolt and Yohan Blake in his wake, before deciding he had been too hasty in letting his football dreams go following his experience in the Chelsea youth set-up to the more basic environment of Dagenham & Redbridge and returning to his first love just in time to become a part of the England team that lifts the World Cup in Rio's Maracana Stadium 48 years after the fabled victory at Wembley Stadium.


As it is, the British media will have to content itself with the story of a startlingly talented young athlete who, as the newly appointed British athletics team captain Dai Greene (pictured below) said earlier this week, possibly doesn't even realise the magnitude of what he has achieved this season as he has earned qualification to the Olympics and a global junior title, lowering his personal best to 10.08sec and then 10.05 in the process.

Asked if he had won the world junior title, Greene – who took the senior world 400m hurdles gold in Daegu last season and looks hugely likely to be on the Olympic podium in London – smiled and shook his head. "I wasn't good enough to qualify, never mind win it," he said.

So in Gemili, British athletics has a fresh and invigorating talent. But British athletics has been here before. In 1998 there were excitable interviews on the BBC live news bulletin with the young man who had just indicated, apparently, that he was the New Linford Christie by winning the world junior 100 and 200m titles – Christian Malcolm.


Malcolm was – and is – a sublime sprinter who has had a terrific career, but in individual terms his greatest tangible rewards have been Commonwealth silver and bronze, and fifth place in the Olympic final. He has broken neither 10 seconds for the 100m nor 20 seconds for the 200m.

Two years later Mark Lewis-Francis, an outstanding prospect from Darlaston in the Black Country, decided to concentrate on the world juniors rather than the Sydney Olympics and his ambition was rewarded with the 100m title. But Lewis-Francis, despite anchoring the British sprint relay team to Olympic gold in 2004, has not gone on to achieve in individual terms what that early success pointed towards, despite his recent resurgence to take Commonwealth and European silver medals.

In 2005 it was the affable Harry Aikines-Aryeetey who was exciting home ambitions as he earned the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award having become the first athlete to win the world youth 100 and 200m titles. A year later he emulated Malcolm and Lewis-Francis by taking the world 100m junior title. But he too has found it hard to translate all that junior talent to the senior ranks.

Since Gemili arrived on the radar this season, both Bolt and – this week – Tyson Gay (pictured below) – that is, the fastest and second fastest 100m runners ever to set foot on the track – have praised him in the media. But only because they have been asked about him and responded politely.


Bolt's comments came last month at a press conference on the eve of his appearance in the Oslo Diamond League meeting. He was judicious and sensible in speaking about the difficulties of bridging the gap between junior and senior achievement. As a former world junior 100m champion himself – something he became aged 15 – he had experienced the awkwardness himself. But it didn't seem that he knew Gemili – why would he? This was just someone who had run what, in world terms, is a relatively slow time of 10.08.

Gay, speaking the day before he won Friday's 100m in the Samsung Diamond League meeting at Crystal Palace, clearly did know all about Gemili having tweeted approvingly following the youngster's midweek victory in Barcelona.

The quietly spoken American clearly meant him well as he advised him: "Don't listen to all the hype."

But not 30 seconds earlier, having described Gemili's Barcelona performance as "phenomenal", Gay had commented: "I think he's going to be one of the greatest sprinters of all time, watching that race. He done it at the big show and that's where it counts."

Now that is hype.

Asked how fast he had run as an 18-year-old, Gay responded with a smile: "10.46".

So let's just recap here. Dai Greene and Tyson Gay, both with world titles to their credit, were no great shakes as teenagers.

With the best will in the world – and there is a lot of it out there on his behalf – Gemili is not yet a world beater, and may never be.

As Greene added this week: "He's had a fantastic year. Regardless of what happens at the Olympics he's already exceeded expectation, I think." Which is true and sensible and quite enough for now.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames.

Stuart Pearce's Great Britain squad begin their Olympic preparations in Spain with a behind closed doors friendly against Mexico. For the only previous British Olympic team to play on Spanish soil, a place at the 1968 Olympics IN Mexico was at stake.

The Great Britain manager at the time was Football Association staff coach Charles Hughes, much later vilified for his long ball theories.

"The training was really professionally run. It was stuff that we hadn't been used to," said Millar Hay of Scottish amateur club Queen's Park.

"Simple things that everyone accepts now. Training at the same time as you were playing the following night, being acclimatised, going out on to the pitch and doing your training there."

The preparation of Hughes' squad had begun in the summer of 1967 with a match as part of Queen's Park centenary celebrations. It was followed by a tour of Scandinavia and Ireland.

That autumn they lost 4-0 to Celtic. Their side did not include any of the players who had won the European Cup that summer but did feature future Scottish internationals David Hay and Lou Macari.

Spain awaited Britain, only providing they beat West Germany, coached by Udo Lattek, later to lead Bayern Munich to European glory.

Hughes named his squad for the Olympic match and ordered a get together on Friday night at Bisham Abbey. The trouble was, the three Scots named – Millar Hay, Niall Hopper and Willie Neil – were needed by Queen's Park for a Scottish League match the following afternoon. The club ordered the trio not to travel until after the match, under threat of suspension by the Scottish Football Association.


"Common sense might have prevailed a bit earlier. We were stuck in the middle really. I wanted to play the match and then go down," said Hay.

Hughes now refused to back down and a 13-man squad (all English) travelled to the first leg in Augsburg.

'When the three Queen's Park lads pulled out there was no time to do anything about it," said Peter Deadman of Barking.

"I was not fit to play but Charlie made me join the training session to make it look as though we had a full squad," he said.

Against all odds Britain won 2-0. Although Germany won the second leg Britain were through on aggregate. Spanish eyes were also on the Olympics as they beat Iceland in their qualifier to set up the showdown.

In preparation, Britain beat Arsenal and then scored six against the Republic of Ireland. The Dagenham striker Peter Greene scored a hat-trick which did not escape the notice of the Spanish.


"The British team is a combination of very strong boys who have prepared very well. I was very impressed how they played against first division opposition. Peter Greene is a phenomenal player," observed Spanish manager Eduardo Toba.

By now the British squad included Scots once again. Hay, one of the unwilling refuseniks in the autumn, was back in contention.

"I definitely wanted to play for the Olympic team because I wanted to get as much experience as I possibly could," he said.

The Spanish had decided to play the match in Barcelona. It did not take place at the Nou Camp or Espanol's Sarria stadium but at the home of Sabadell. In the newly opened Stadi Nova Creu Alta (pictured above), a capacity 20,000 generated real atmosphere.

The 19-year-old Manchester United striker Alan Gowling (pictured above, left) joined the squad. He was playing Central League football whilst studying at Manchester University and was "highly rated by Sir Matt Busby". He went on to take his place in the first team alongside Law, Best and Charlton.

"We always believed that we could beat anyone and that was down to Charlie," said Deadman.


The Spanish team included one notable name. Elche's Juan Asensi (pictured above) went on to make his name with Barcelona and appeared for Spain at the 1978 World Cup. "It was a hard shift playing against a lot of players who were reserves for Barcelona," said Hay.

The only goal of the game came in the first seven minutes. Rayo Vallecano's 21-year-old Gerardo Ortega de Francisco headed in from a free-kick.

"The British were surprised," said Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. It was full of admiration for the visitors. "The British exhibited a classic approach, built on physical strength," it said.

Spain came to London for the return leg with a 1-0 lead. It was played at the White City stadium where Britain had won their first Olympic football gold in 1908. The match was not behind closed doors but this competitive match might as well have been.

"It wasn't a huge crowd and with the running track it was really remote," said Hay. "There was a huge clock at either end. It was the most frustrating thing watching 90 minutes tick away and know that could have been us, we had loads of chances."

Eric Nicholls writing in Goal magazine noted scathingly: "This performance, unimaginative in its execution, disastrous in its achievement, was the end product of three years of medical tests, psychiatric tests, endurance tests to say nothing of sifting and sorting the country's resources in the cause of team building."

The Spanish team of 1968 were not on the same level as their 2012 counterparts. Though they negotiated their group, they eventually lost in the quarter-finals to Mexico.

The Games were held in October so Britain's amateur footballers were back in domestic action. The Olympics, beamed back to the United Kingdom live by satellite and televised in colour for the first time, made stars of Bob Beamon, David Hemery and Tommie Smith amongst others, but not Britain's footballers.

Philip Barker, one of the world's most renowned sports historians, is the author of The History of the Olympic Torch, published by Amberley recently. To order a copy click here.

Another corruption scandal exposed, more top names disgraced – and once again Sepp Blatter has seemingly slipped through the net of culpability.

No-one in sports administration has become more of an expert in the "not me, Guv" stakes over the years than the FIFA President who has once again distanced himself from any wrongdoing, this time in the explosive ISL bribery case.

By acknowledging that he was the person referred to as P1 in  Swiss court documents which FIFA published and which lifted the lid on an affair that has marred his 14-year Presidency, Blatter has taken a calculated gamble but one which, in a way, he had to.

Blatter has made it his personal crusade to reform FIFA in the last two years of his topsy-turvy Presidency and bring about greater transparency. To have allowed the ISL case to drag on any longer would have contaminated every single step of this process.

Yet it is now clear Blatter knew that his predecessor, João Havelange (pictured below, left), pocketed "commissions" from FIFA's former marketing partner in exchange for lucrative World Cup television rights.

So what he is effectively admitting is that FIFA did nothing to sanction Havelange or his former son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira, who between them were alleged to have received 41 million Swiss francs (£27 million/$42 million/€34 million) from ISL for personal gain.


Cover-up? Not according to Blatter (pictured above, right) who argues firstly and foremost that he has never been accused of anything and therefore has nothing to hide; and secondly that the commissions were not considered a criminal offence at the time they were paid – between 1992 and 2001.

Spurious reasoning? Some might say so. Trustworthy any longer? Debatable. Blatter, who was FIFA general secretary at the time the payments apparently took place, will doubtless declare that he has no intention of resigning, just as he has done over a number of previous controversies that have cast doubt on his credibility over the years.

Ironically, until being forced into a position of greater openness following last year's cash-for-votes scandal, FIFA itself sought to keep the ISL case under wraps. Now that the documents have been published following a concerted campaign by a series of media organisations to get to the truth, critics of world football's governing body will rightly ask how FIFA can possibly turn a blind eye to the vast sums taken in kickbacks by Havelange and Teixeira, however long ago the affair took place.

A year ago, FIFA's Ethics Commission dropped a disciplinary investigation against Jack Warner over his role in the cash-for-votes scandal when the former Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) boss and FIFA vice-president got in first by walking away from all his football roles. Teixeira (pictured below, left) recently did the same thing, citing ill-health, while Blatter has made it clear that only the full FIFA Congress can retrospectively punish the ageing Havelange who is still FIFA Honorary President.


A satisfactory conclusion to the affair? Hardly.

What happens next is anyone's guess. Blatter is likely to face a media onslaught at Tuesday's (July 17) press conference, being streamed round the world, that follows a meeting of the FIFA Executive Committee in Zurich at which the chairmen of the revamped two-chamber Ethics Committee will be announced.

Not for the first time, but crucially with his make-or-break reform process in full swing, Blatter will have to mount another of his renowned charm offensives and muster all his qualities as a shrewd politician to prevent his reputation taking another downward spiral just when he is at pains to win over a sceptical public.

Andrew Warshaw is a former sports editor of The European, the newspaper that broke the Bosman story in the 1990s, the most significant issue to shape professional football as we know it today. Before that, he worked for the Associated Press for 13 years in Geneva and London. He is now the chief football reporter for insidethegames and insideworldfootball. Follow him on Twitter.

One of the things I teach as a coach, and lecture on as legacy ambassador for the Youth Sport Trust at sport colleges around the UK, is the importance failure plays in both sport and art.

It is a necessary "evil" for any athlete or artist to really grow, mature and reach their full potential. It is important to learn from your failures and mistakes. Often you learn just as much, if not more, from your failures as your successes.

Not to contradict one of Britain's most famous historical figures, but Winston Churchill's famous phrase "Failure is not an option" cannot be applied to athletes. For a large part of an athlete's life is filled with failure and is actually a requirement – failure in competition is always an option. The key thing is that an athlete realizes that failure and failing is part of the learning process, part of the athletic experience and, for that matter, part of life.

In the weight room, an athlete pushes the weight to failure to get stronger. It is required. It is expected. It is science: it is called temporary momentary muscle failure.

High jump, pole vault and Olympic weightlifting competitions almost always end in failure when you win. And in gymnastic competitions the score is almost always less than perfect, less than 10. All you have to do is look back to the 1970's when Nadia Comaneci's (pictured below) scored the first perfect 10. It made history because it was unique. It was a first. It had not been done before and it has only been done a few times since.


Two weeks ago, I competed in the javelin throw at my eighth consecutive Olympic Trials when I competed in the 2012 UK Olympic Athletics Trials in Birmingham, aged 50 (pictured below). I smashed a 24-year-old world age group record by over seven metres with a throw of 72.78m and came second, becoming the oldest medalist since 1936! All in all a good day's work at the office or was it?

While I achieved everything I had set out to do, I was beaten and did not get the A standard that is required to make the Olympic Team. Therefore, one could make the argument that I failed, as I did not win and did not make the team.

It is all a matter of perception and expectation. If the only purpose of competing is to win then most of us are going to be continually disappointed, so why bother even competing?

So while failure is an important component of an athlete's journey, setting realistic goals and expectations is also key to becoming successful and reaching your full potential. Whether an athlete's goal is to make the Olympic team, win a medal or just do their best on the day and take part. After all isn't that what sport and especially the Olympics is ultimately all about: "the taking part",  "doing your best"? Isn't that what Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, envisioned for the Games?


As I have aged my goals and expectations have changed and so has my motivation. I can't do what I used to do and I can't do all the things I want to do. So I adapt, modify my approach and make the necessary physical and mental changes. If I didn't I would utterly and completely fail and that wouldn't be good.

I have always been told people fall into two categories, you are either a positive or negative person – you see a glass of water as either half full or half empty. With the experience I have had being on this planet for half a century and competing for 40 years, I would have to disagree with this statement now. It is incomplete. I would say that there is another category, which is for the people who are happy there is a glass with some water in it. This last category is a group I would now put myself in. I am just happy to still be out there competing. Trust me, I savour every moment.

So as we watch the 2012 Olympics in two weeks, I hope we enjoy and celebrate the athletic accomplishments that we see – and don't see for that matter – and realise the athletes are giving it their all, doing their very best. They have had to overcome many failures along the way to get there. Don't get too wrapped up in the medal count for that distorts the real Olympic experience, the human experience. There will be some great successes, but also some notable failures and disasters on the field of play and in the battle of competition and we should give all the athletes our full positive support. We, the spectators and fans, cannot fail to do this. That is our unwritten role. Don't fall into the negative pessimistic role as individuals or as a collective.

The world's biggest sporting event – the Olympics and Paralympics – are about to begin. Let's enjoy and celebrate that. It is in Britain, on our home turf. We won the bid to host the games. We did not fail. Now let's make sure we don't fail to support our athletes, coaches and organizations to make this truly "the best games ever".

Roald Bradstock represented Britain in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics and in 1996 was an alternate for the United States Olympic team. Bradstock competed in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 United States Olympic Trials. He has now switched his allegiance back to Britain. In addition to being an Olympic athlete, Bradstock is also an Olympic artist dubbed "The Olympic Picasso" 

Credit for top photo: Atlanta Sports Photography

In the past few years, I've been fortunate enough to meet global Olympic icons: Seb Coe, Michael Johnson, Daley Thomson, Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Sergey Bubka and Sir Steve Redgrave to name but a few. I've even managed to chat to the duo likely to be the two biggest stars at London 2012 in the form of Jamaican sprint sensation Usain Bolt and American swim king Michael Phelps.

However, the only time I've had goosebumps before shaking the hand of another person was this week – when I met the living legend that is Tommie Smith.

Smith, who is now 68-years-old, will forever be remembered for making that "Black Power" salute at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics in one of the most symbolic moments in the history of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

It came after the American stormed to gold in the men's 200 metres. His compatriot, John Carlos, took the bronze medal in the race and it was then that both raised a clenched fist clad in a black glove (pictured below) in that iconic stand for human rights.

Such was the power of that moment it is often forgotten that Smith obliterated the world record to take gold with his stunning victory (pictured below) coming in 19.83sec. It made him the first person in history go under the 20-second barrier, and even by today's standards the time is simply phenomenal.

But those few infamous seconds on the podium cost Smith and Carlos the glory they deserved. The majority of people slammed their actions, including the then International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Avery Brundage, who said the pair had disgraced all Americans and that such a political statement had no place at the Games – despite the fact that Brundage had made no objections against Nazi salutes at Berlin in 1936 when he was head of the United States Olympic Committee President.


In an immediate response to their actions Smith and Carlos were suspended from the United States team by Brundage and moved out of the Athletes' Village.

The gesture from the pair had further repercussions, including heavy abuse and even death threats against them and their families upon their return to America and for many years after. It is only in recent years that awards have followed but, almost criminally, neither Smith nor Carlos have yet been inducted into the USOC Hall of Fame.

Smith came to London this week for the premiere of the film Salute which documents the series of events that led to that controversial moment on the podium back in the Sixties.


The film is directed by Matt Norman, the nephew of the Australian 200m silver medallist, Peter Norman, who shared the victory podium that day with Smith and Carlos. The film highlights the surprisingly influential role of Norman, who actually suggested that his fellow medallists wear a black glove on either hand despite only having one pair between them. Like Smith and Carlos, he also wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badge to show his support.

The film was shown at a small cinema at the University of Westminster in London and following the screening Smith took to the stage for a standing ovation. He spoke about the difficult times that followed the medal ceremony and how, despite being the fastest man in the world, he became an outcast for what he had done.

"At that time it was something that had to be done and I had the platform to do it," he declared.

"Did I want to do it? No, I didn't," he revealed. "People always ask me if I regret it because it overshadowed my gold medal-winning performance. But my only regret is that I had to do it because of the time we lived in back then. I was blessed that I was able to use my talent to help those that couldn't have the platform I did."

After being hypnotised by Smith's speech from start to finish the end of the evening was suddenly upon us and the legendary figure made to sign some pictures (pictured below) before departing.


Having been aware of the Mexico City story since I was very young, despite the fact that it happened several years before I was born, it was with some apprehension that I approached Smith for a chat.

As I reached him, for no particular reason I spontaneously but wordlessly handed him the insidethegames pin badge I was wearing. He took it and smiled warmly.

"You're a good man," he said to me as he signed my picture. It was then that he held out his right hand for me to shake. I was only too aware it was the same hand that was raised on the Olympic podium in Mexico City some 44 years ago.

Shaking that hand, belonging to such a towering figure in sports history, is a moment I won't ever forget and I left feeling rather humbled.

When London 2012 is over legends will rise and they will be fully worthy of that prestigious status.

But as far as I am concerned, none will ever be as big an icon as Tommie Smith.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames.

You will have heard of Fifty Shades of Grey, the racy bonkbuster that is now the world's fastest-selling paperback. No doubt many of you will have read it – especially the ladies.

Now stand by for the Olympic sequel: Two Hundred Shades of Gold.

That is approximately the number of books about the Games that will be on the shelves by opening night as 2012 heads for the biggest publishing bonanza in Olympic history.

A whole pile of them are already stacked up in my study, propped up by the daddy of them all, the prodigious tome produced by veteran scribe David Miller.

A veritable War And Peace of the Games, his Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) is an Olympian assembly of stats and stories, though hardly one you would carry around the Olympic Park as your guide to the Games. Unless you happen to be an Olympic weight-lifter...


Actually, immensely fascinating as it is, it also makes a terrific door-stop.  For the £40 ($62/€51), 683-page foot-long, two-inch thick epic (pictured above) published by Mainstream weighs in at six and a half pounds. As Sebastian Coe says, definitely a book which is harder to pick up than put down.

There are two other books which I also recommend: Neil Wilson's entertainingly compiled The Greatest British Olympians (Carlton, £16.99 ($26.33/€21.48)), which contains beautifully-illustrated biographies of 58 legendary figures, and Britain & The Olympics by Bob Phillips (Carnegie, £12.99 ($20.13/€16.42)), equally readable with its mixture of history and nostalgia.

But if Fifty Shades of Grey is more your cup of tea (Earl Grey, no doubt) there are a couple of steamy paperbacks which allegedly lifts the lid on what happens when the curtains are drawn in those Olympic Village apartments.

The Secret Olympian (Bloomsbury, £8.99 ($13.93/€11.37)) is supposedly scribbled by a former Team GB athlete, who highlights just how much fun goes on in the Games. A lot of laughs as well as lovemaking – in Beijing's Olympic village, the 10,000 free-issue condoms were emblazoned with the motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger", and had to be replenished hourly. Revealing stuff – except for the identity of the anonymous author, believed to be a rower. No, not you, Sir Steve...

Then there is Sex and the Olympics (Collaborative Publications, pictured below), an Australian-produced "unauthorised guide to the raunchy hormonal stew that is the Olympic Village".


Author James Buckley claims that since the Ancient Greeks invented the Games "the Olympics were always destined to be a sordid and sexual affair". Well, they did run naked in those days.

The Greeks may well have had a word for it, but it for the less prurient students of Olympic affairs I suggest a compelling look-back at the first of the modern Games in Athens to compare just how different things were when it all kicked off.

1986: The First Modern Olympics has been researched and penned with diligence and some humour by sports historian David Randall, a colleague of mine for several years both on the Observer and Independent on Sunday.

He has always been something of a sports "nut", although I have yet to see him in an anorak, and the book is a joyous account of how these inaugural Games gave birth to modern international sport.

One gem tells how security was hardly a consideration, with one exception. The United States ambassador took no chances and issued every American competitor with a Colt 45.

Here are some other absorbing snippets:


·         The most eccentric journey by an athlete to the 1896 Games was that of Italian runner Carlo Airoldi (pictured above) from Milan. He took a train a short distance from his home city, and then got off and decided to walk the rest of the way – 1,000 miles through northern Italy, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia, and Greece. He duly arrived in Athens, but then found that the Games organisers refused him entry because he had once accepted prize money and was therefore a professional. His club, Milan's Societ Pro-Italia, lodged an appeal, but this was rejected and Airoldi had to go back home.

·         No National Olympic Committees to select and pay for teams' travel and accommodation then. The US team, whose heroic journey stopped the Athens Games being an entirely European affair, was paid for by a couple of wealthy patrons, and the athletes themselves. They left Hoboken, New Jersey on the SS Fulda on March 21, and arrived in the port of Naples 12 days later. They then caught a train for Brindisi, followed by a boat to Patras, and, finally, a train to Athens. They arrived on April 4, the day before the Games opened, after a journey of 17 days.

·         There were a couple of conspicuous acts of sportsmanship. The 100k cycling took a heavy toll of the original ten starters, and eventually only two survived: Léon Flameng (pictured below, left) of France, and Greece's Georgios Kolettis. At one point Kolettis had to stop to repair his bike, whereupon Flameng, who was racing with a French flag tied around one of his legs, stopped too and waited for him. He was not to suffer for his sportsmanship. Despite falling himself near the end, he crossed the line after 3 hours 8 minutes and 19 seconds of pedalling, and claimed by a margin of 11 laps the first of many Olympic cycling titles for France.


·         Then there was the generosity of the best two marksmen at the Games, the American Paine brothers. John won the first shooting event, the 25 metre pistol, and then dropped out of the 30m event to allow his brother Sumner to win that. Both clearly in a league of their own, they then decided to retire from all shooting events to give others a chance.

·         The Closing Ceremony, at which all medals and prizes were presented (including gifts such as the ties for some winners donated by a Greek department store), opened with something unlikely to be repeated now. British field athlete (and tennis player) George Robertson, stepped forward and recited an ode in ancient Greek.

·         The swimming events were held not in a pool, but in the sea. A large raft was anchored off shore at Piraeus, and competitors were taken by boat out to this, clambered onto it, lined up, dived into the sea, and struck out for the beach. The Games were held in early April and so the Med was bitterly cold – with the water estimated to be a mere 13C. It was too much for one entrant, young American Gardner Williams, who, in the 100m, dived in, screamed out at the freezing water, and hauled himself back onto the raft to end his involvement in a race for which he had travelled 17 days to compete.

·         Press hostility to the Games was common. As US athletes departed for Greece, the New York Times wrote: "The American amateur sportsman should know that in going to Athens he is taking an expensive journey to a third-rate capital...where he will be devoured by fleas...and where, if he does win prizes, it will be an honour requiring explanation."

·         The track was 500m long, very long and narrow, with bends so severe that athletes had to appreciably slow to stay on their feet. This, plus its soft cinder surface was estimated to add at least 15 seconds to 1,500m times. For the 100m and high hurdles, the "lanes" were not only marked by paint but had little string fences about a foot off the ground all the way down the track.

·         Crouch starts (no starting blocks then) were so novel that the Greek crowds laughed when US sprinters such as 100m winner Tom Burke got down on one knee. In the high hurdles, the Greeks failed, mainly because they treated each hurdle as if it were a high jump. And, in the field events, the Americans triple jumpers found, much to their initial alarm, that their event was not a hop, skip, and jump, but a hop, hop, jump. No measured run-ups were allowed, and no one was told how far they had leapt until the event was over.

The book concludes with a chapter which tells of what befell some of those first Olympic heroes, like the one who became a freedom fighter and another a war correspondent. Two brothers who won gold as gymnasts, German Jews Alfred and Gustav Flatow, later perished in concentration camps in their seventies.

Weightlifter Launceston Elliot (pictured below) was Britain's first Olympic champion, and, of all the 1896 Olympians, the one who was most able to cash in on his sporting success, becoming a world-famous circus strongman.


Following publication, Randall has heard from a descendent of one of the participants, Demetrios Golemis, the 800m bronze medalist.

His doctor grandson John Tripoulas tells a remarkable story of how Golemis, the son of a poor fisherman from Lefkada Island, was sent to Piraeus where he worked as a house servant in order to pay his living expenses while simultaneously attending high school there.

As a reward for his success in the Olympic Games, Golemis was awarded a scholarship by Prince George of Greece. He graduated from Athens University Medical School in 1901 to become a respected poet.

No doubt Baron Pierre de Coubertin would have approved. For it was he who introduced a literary section into those early Games, and took the very first poetry gold medal himself in 1912 for his "Ode to Sport".

Some journey from that innocuous ode to Sex and The Olympics.

Randall's 1896: The First Modern Olympics and its companion Tweet Edition are published as eBooks by Black Toad Books at £2.99 ($4.63/€3.78) and £0.99 ($1.53/€1.25) respectively.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

The 50 days to go to the Paralympics mark almost feels like the place of no return, yet time has passed so quickly since 2005 for us to reach this point.

I remember seven years ago in Singapore watching my good friend, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge, open the envelope and pull out the piece of paper which read "London" and thinking "Wow!"

The fact that it is nearly here is mouth-watering to say the least.

All the Paralympic Games I have been involved in, going back to my first as a player in 1972, have been special.

However, as a proud Briton, I think London is going to be that extra bit special as the Games is heading back to its spiritual home.

Back in 1948, it was Sir Ludwig Guttmann who was responsible for kicking things off, organising the Stoke Mandeville Games (pictured below) featuring 16 injured World War Two veterans on a patch of grass at the back of a hospital.

This time round, the responsibility for organising the Games has fallen upon the shoulders of Seb Coe, Paul Deighton and Chris Holmes, the leaders of London 2012, who have quite simply done a tremendous job in bringing these Games together.

The teamwork ethic developed over the last seven years between the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and London 2012 has been excellent and I think this will certainly help come Games time.


The Games, of course, has grown significantly in size since 1948 with 16 athletes becoming 4,200 and a handful of spectators becoming a paying public of millions.

Meanwhile, the TV viewers are now counted in the billions.

The expectation for the Games has also grown.

London 2012 and its partners have done a brilliant job in building awareness, and although many still say the Paralympics will be the surprise of London 2012 I think we are heading into them with a far greater expectation than ever before.

This Games could be a landmark for the Paralympic Movement in the same way that the Stoke Mandeville Games was back in 1948.


A few weeks ago, a statue of Sir Ludwig Guttmann (pictured above) was unveiled at Stoke Mandeville and who knows what will be revealed in 50 or 60 years' time to mark the success of London 2012.

To mark 50 days to go, the IPC has announced its plans to offer the most comprehensive coverage ever of a Paralympic Games.

I know I am biased, but the plans are really impressive and will enable everyone around the world to watch live action from many sports by logging onto www.paralympic.org.

It is important that those people in territories that do not have live TV pictures are able to see the Games, and we believe through offering nearly 600 hours of live action via five online channels we will achieve this.

In addition to this, the site will also be uploading thousands of hours of video on-demand, so if you miss a live race you will easily be able to catch up.


Finally, one last word on Oscar Pistorius and his participation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, a subject on which the IPC has faced many questions since last week's announcement.

Oscar is a great guy, a great athlete and a proud Paralympian.

The IPC's vision is all about inspiring and exciting the world, and by competing in the Olympics and Paralympics I am confident he will achieve this and help change perceptions on a global level about what can be achieved by a person with an impairment.

I wish him the best of luck for the Olympics and cannot wait to see him defend his titles in the Paralympics.

His 100 metres showdown on September 6 against world champion Jerome Singleton and new world record holder Jonnie Peacock (pictured above) could be one of the stand-out races of the Paralympics.

I look forward to seeing you all there.

Sir Philip Craven is President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member and sits on the London 2012 Board.