After 17 days of intense competition in Mexico, it was rather sad watching the Closing Ceremony last night bring proceedings at the Guadalajara 2011 Pan American Games to a conclusion.

In keeping with everything that has embodied the competition, the Ceremony at the Omnilife Stadium was full of the passion, colour and excitement that made it a spectacle to remember.

In addition, it even featured a brilliantly surreal performance from Puerto Rican pop singer Ricky Martin who bought the house down with the iconic 1999 single "Livin' la Vida Loca".

But for me, the telling moment came when Emilio Gonzalez Marquez, the President of the Guadalajara 2011 Organising Committee and Governor of Jalisco, took to the microphone and roared to the people of Guadalajara that, "Now we go for the Olympics."

By all accounts, his statement was not just an exaggerated war cry designed to fire up the 50,000 crowd but actually a major strategic goal for Guadalajara following the near $1 billion (£620 million/€718 million) invested to improve sports infrastructure, build the Athletes' Village and actually stage the Pan American Games in the city.

Having just missed the deadline to put forward a bid for the 2020 Olympics, 2024 now seems like the likely bet for a Guadalajara Olympic bid.

So could they do it?

Well certainly not tomorrow. But 2024 would perhaps be a realistic timeframe to get things ready in the city and prove to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that they could stage its blue-ribbon competition.

After all, a bid is one thing, a winning bid is a whole different story.

But Guadalajara will draw strength from Rio de Janeiro, who used their impressive staging of the 2007 Pan American Games as the platform for their successful 2016 Olympic and Paralympic bid in Copenhagen in October 2009.

Certainly the foundations for a great Olympics are in Guadalajara.

It features superb sports facilities, hundreds of hotels, designer shops, a huge range of restaurants, great weather and a very charming Mexican 'look and feel' that is a very welcoming for any visitor.

But they do have one obvious Achilles Heel.

It doesn't appear to be security, which ran extremely smoothly despite prior concerns, and it isn't contaminated meat in Mexico containing the illegal drug clenbuterol as so far not one athlete at the Pan American Games has tested positive for the substance - although admittedly every precaution was taken by the 42 nations in order to avoid the occurrence and the meat was escorted into the Athletes' Village by armed police guard.

No; it is that dreaded "T" word again. Traffic.

Crossing the busy road in Guadalajara is an achievement in itself and getting a bus to and from a venue is a long, gruelling process that will take up a minimum of half your day if you are lucky to miss the congested areas – which appear to be everywhere.

There is no respite at night either, when the volume of cars on the road somehow manages to increase.

It is the problem of traffic that London are becoming increasing concerned about with the 2012 Games looming ever closer and I was not at all surprised to see numerous representative of the London Organising Committee out and about in Mexico.

After all, the 2011 Pan American Games provided the last chance for London 2012 to see a major multi-sport event in action and learn from its mistakes.

Well, there is the Innsbruck 2012 Winter Youth Olympics in January but is debatable how much London will learn, operationally, from staging a winter sport event for 14-to-18-year-olds.

So any accurate report heading back from Guadalajara to the London 2012 HQ in Canary Wharf will highlight the traffic problem at the event and suggest yet again that the English capital continue their commendable efforts to minimise disruption next year.

The IOC have for a long time highlighted the issue as London's bid hurdle and it is becoming a much more prominent feature in the media as the 2012 Countdown Clock in Trafalgar Square keeps ticking towards D-Day.

London actually has major advantages over Guadalajara when it comes to transport in terms of a tube system they promise will be uninterrupted during the Games, the Javelin Train - which will get from central London to the Olympic Park in seven minutes - and walk and cycle ways across the city that are being heavily invested in before next summer.

However, doubts remain over how successful the controversial Olympic Route Network (ORN) will be in full operation complete with the controversial, designated lanes for athletes, the media and VIP officials.

Given that London's roads are already full to the brim, closing off large parts of the capital's existing roads spells disaster on paper.

Undoubtedly huge thought and planning has already gone into the plan but the issue can never be investigated too much and right until the last possible second, organisers must continue to address the topic to ensure that the problem does not unfairly dominate the headlines.

After all, Guadalajara 2011 showed exactly how irritatingly disappointing it can be when a huge major sporting celebration has the dampeners put on it simply due to the fact that getting from A to B is a major hassle.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames 

It has been two years since I declared my intention to try to qualify for the 2012 UK Olympic Trials, when I will be 50.

I don't know what odds the local bookie would have given, but it is safe to say they would have been pretty long.

Well, on May 19, on a warm spring evening in Tuscon, Arizona, I broke my own UK Veterans javelin record three more times and set three more world age records for a 49-year-old. But my most important accomplishment that evening was that I threw far enough to qualify for the 2012 UK Olympic Trials – my eighth consecutive Olympic Trials.

My furthest throw that evening of 74.73 metres was my best performance in 11 years – since 2000, when I was only 38.

After the competition, I decided to finish my 2011 season. I had achieved my goal for this year. My focus was now on next year.

I rested 48 hours and then began a 400-day training programme that will take me right up to the 2012 Olympic Trials – 667 workouts – averaging three-plus hours per session, five workouts every three days. By the time I step out on the track next summer for the Trials, I will have racked up approximately 2,012 training hours in this 400-day cycle.

The focus in my workouts is volume – insane, mind-numbing, hour-after-hour repetition - 10,000-plus abs and almost 10,000 throws per week for starters – it may seem excessive, but that's the kind of work that needs to be done.

It is all about numbers. I count everything: the number of exercises I do, the reps, the sets. I time, measure and weigh everything, constantly pushing myself to do more, do it faster and go further.

But the numbers I look at are not limited to just my training. There are many others I must know and monitor with regard to my health and fitness.

I have had stress tests, heart scans and blood tests to check my cholesterol, blood sugar, PSA etc. Knowing these numbers allows me to know how my body is functioning and address any issues before they become serious.

To my amazement, I discovered my cardiac function is at 65 per cent, resting heart-rate is 42 beats per minutes and my blood pressure is 108/68 – all very good numbers, especially for a man just six months shy of his 50th birthday.

The number crunching does not stop there. I also looked at my diet and, as a result, dramatically changed it. I cut out alcohol, caffeine, reduced my overall calorie intake and changed the percentages of protein, fat, carbohydrates and other nutrients.

The result: my bodyweight has dropped 50 pounds in the past three years and the last 10 pounds have fallen off since May this year. My current body weight of 84 kilograms is the lightest I have been in 30 years and my body fat is now less than 10 per cent.

So, as I rack up the training hours and try to stay healthy, and as I move ever closer to next year's trials, I keep asking myself, "Will all this work and attention to numbers pay off in the end?"

The answer is, I don't know. Obviously I hope so, but I realise I am going into uncharted territory – after all, I have never been 50 before.


Next year will be my 40th competitive season – approximately 700 competitions under my belt and more than two million throws over my life time.

Will I benefit from the years of experience or I will pay the price for getting all that experience? It's a catch 22.

So I march on undeterred. I am inspired. I am in the Trials. Now, how much further can I go? Could I make the finals – make the top eight? Could I get to the podium – be a medalist? Is that possible? Could I make the GB Olympic team? No way! That would be impossible...or would it?

What I do know is that I am going to do my best. That is all anyone can do, right? I may not win the trials, but I don't plan on coming last either. How many scalps can I take –  and young scalps at that?

The average age of the top 12 UK javelin throwers competing at next year's trials, excluding myself, will be 22. The competitors' ages will range from 19 to 27 years – that's 31 to 24 years younger then me. Yikes!. When I was in my first Olympics, way back in 1984, not one of my rivals next year was even born. The next oldest competitor was in his second trimester in his mother's womb.

I admit I have become obsessed with time and have one eye constantly on the clock, watching the seconds, minutes and hours tick by. On the one hand, the Olympic trials are getting closer; on the other, I am getting older, closing in on 50 and beyond.

I am a thrower, but I am also in a race now – a race against time. All I have to do is look in the mirror to see my wrinkles, which seem to multiply on a daily basis. I am bald and what hair I do have is turning grey, and now I find I am shrinking. I used to be just over 5ft 11in. Now I am less than 5ft 10!

So whether you say 20-12 or 2,000-12, next year is coming. There is no stopping it. And whether you say I will be 50 or half a century next year, there is no stopping me either – you can count on it.

My life as an athlete and as an artist has always been about numbers and repetition – from the number of times I lift a weight to the number of lines or shapes I put in my paintings.

And now even my journey through to next year has become about numbers: from my preparation to my postings to my 4,806 friends on Facebook and the 1.82 million hits on my YouTube video – it's all about numbers.

Roald Bradstock represented Britain in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics and in 1996 was an alternate for 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 and hopes to compete in the trials for London 2012. In addition to being an Olympic athlete, Bradstock is also an Olympic artist dubbed "The Olympic Picasso"

London 2012 may be the most bet-upon Olympic Games in history.

Bookmaker William Hill last month predicted that the betting industry could achieve turnover of as much as £50 million ($81 million/€57 million) from the Games and said it was "optimistic" it would break the £10 million ($16 million/€11 million) turnover barrier for the first time.

Rival Ladbrokes, meanwhile, describes next year's Olympics as "a massive part of our strategy".

It sees the Games in part as a way of "changing people's perceptions" and letting them know that there is more to bookmakers than racing and greyhound racing.

This high level of interest in using the Olympics - wholly legitimately - as a betting medium coincides, however, with warnings from sports authorities, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC), of the threat to sport posed by illegal and irregular betting.

The IOC told me they had identified illegal and irregular sports betting as "one of the leading threats to organised sports".

"Although we have yet to detect an instance of illegal or irregular betting at an Olympic Games," the IOC said, "we are not naïve.

"The number of cases in many sports is on the rise and we need to acknowledge the threat and take steps to neutralize it."

One way or another then, betting may well be a rich source of stories at next year's Games.

I certainly don't see anything wrong with legitimate organisations running books on Olympic events.

Indeed, as an occasional punter, it is not impossible that I might avail myself of their services from time to time.

More than that, the more interested leading High Street bookmakers become in the Games as a source of business, the better you would expect them to know the market.

And the better they get to know the market, the more valuable a potential source of intelligence they should become for the authorities.

After all, if someone has rigged a result and is seeking to profit from it, legitimate bookmakers must rank high on the list of potential victims.

An active legal betting market on Olympic events could therefore be a positive boon in the fight against illegal betting activities.

What does strike me as worthy of debate, given the huge sums companies pay for marketing rights enabling them to associate their names with the Games, is whether the betting industry should be required to pay some sort of fee for the right to use Olympic sport as a betting medium.

There is a precedent of sorts in the horseracing levy under which 10.75 percent of UK bookmakers' gross profits derived from UK racing products is taken and put to use for various purposes in the sport.

In the case of the Olympics, the obvious use for money raised from the betting industry via an Olympic levy would be to help fund what seems certain to be a costly fight against illegal and irregular betting.

It will be interesting to see if the high-powered international working group that is currently drafting proposals on how effectively to combat the problem comes up with anything along these lines.

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

Bar one, I have covered every Olympic Games since Tokyo in 1964. The one I missed was Atlanta 1996, when I was sports editing The Observer. Colleagues who were there tell me I was a good judge.

In all those Games, I have also covered every Olympic sport. Bar one.

Football.

I have never had the inclination, or been requested, to attend the Olympic football tournament. There simply has been no interest in it in this country, probably because Britain wasn't involved.

This may change next year of course when, for the first time since 1960 a Team GB - of sorts - will line up against some of the world's best under-23 players in a competition (the women's event has no age limit) in which the London organiser are finding an embarrassingly hard sell.

I can understand why. For me, Olympic football lacks substance and credibility and should not be on the Games menu.

The Olympics do not need football any more than they need equestrianism, tennis, beach volleyball or, when they debut in Rio in 2016, rugby sevens and golf.

These are sports that are cluttering up the already overcrowded Olympic theatre - in the case of rugby sevens and golf at the expense of some disciplines in worthier sports like track cycling, judo and sailing.

But that's a personal view.

As far as Olympic footy is concerned, I doubt if anyone actually cares about it other than those involved.

Can you name the current Olympic football champions without Googling? The answer is Argentina.


But even the most ardent Argentinean fan would tell you that what matters to them is not winning the Olympic tournament but the World Cup. The Olympics are a second-rate sideshow for football, just as they are for tennis and will be for golf.

However, we are stuck with them and whatever sort of football team Stuart Pearce manages to scrabble together for 2012  - whether it shapes up as GB United or more like Man United - the one certainty is that a 37-year-old David Beckham will not only be one of the three permitted overage players but will probably lead it.

While Pearce says he has a free hand over selection (though he will need to call the misplaced Anglophobic bluff of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland FAs), there is no doubt he will be "leaned on" to pick Becks.

With 1.7 million tickets still to sell for the football competition Games organisers, the FA and the British Olympic Association (BOA) know the publicity value of such an iconic figure is immense. Moreover, I would not be surprised if Beckham is not already in pole position to be Britain's flag-bearer at the Opening Ceremony next July as a reward for his part in helping London win the bid and his current work as a global ambassador.


Lord Coe's team have been fulsome in their praise of Beckham's contribution and the BOA are certainly keen to see football play a high-profile role in a GB team's return to the Olympics after more than 60 years, if only to answer Arsène Wenger's jibe that the Games are "for track and field only". Apparently, what Wenger actually knows about the Olympics could be written on the back of an Arsenal season ticket.

What a slur on the likes of Steve Redgrave, Chris Hoy, Ben Ainslie and James DeGale. They actually won hardware, something which these days appears to be beyond the reach of Wenger.

To have Beckham leading from the front may be contentious but so is the whole question of fielding a GB team.

They say controversy sells but so far, it hasn't shifted many tickets for the 2012 football tournament.

Things may perk up if Pearce picks Beckham to play alongside Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney as the three overage squad members.


Sir Alex Ferguson may argue there is no way Rooney could participate in both European Championships and the Olympics next year, but why not? He may recall that Cristiano Ronaldo did precisely that in 2004.

And as for players from the other Home Nations, notably Welshmen Giggs, Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey and Scots Charlie Adam and Darren Fletcher, being intimidated by their governing bodies, let's remember that Argentina became Olympic champions in Beijing with the assistance of the great Lionel Messi, who won a legal battle against his club, Barcelona, for refusing him permission to take part.

I suggest that if any chosen Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish players - men and women - stand firm, there's nothing their governing bodies dare do about it. The phrase nose and face comes to mind if they considered banning them from future international tournaments.

I also wonder whether it would have helped had the FA not settled on an Englishman, albeit an intensely patriotic one in "Psycho" Pearce, to take charge of Team GB


Fergie was initially approached by Lord Coe but declined as he reckoned her would still be too busy with Manchester United next year. Yet wouldn't the Ulsterman Martin O'Neill, currently available, have been a greater unifying influence?

As it happens these arguments are academic, rather like the football tournament itself.

I wish Teams GB of both sexes well and that those worthy of selection get their places and enjoy the Olympic experience. But sorry, I won't be watching.

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.

With little more than 300 days to go until the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games get under way, focusing on life after London might seem like the sporting equivalent of looking at the menu and then asking for the bill.

But for those of us in the UK Talent Team, our day-to-day activities are fixed on Rio 2016 and recruiting the next generation of athletes that will try to emulate the success we hope to see Great Britain achieve in London.

The UK Talent Team is a joint venture between UK Sport and the English Institute of Sport (EIS) and works with national governing bodies to support their talent identification and development activities.

It is a key part of the high-performance system and uses detailed analysis to identify and develop talent. In recent years, it has run a series of programmes to spot athletes with the capability to succeed in Olympic and Paralympic sports.


Our programmes often focus on attributes that can be transferred across sports and may entail a person switching from one discipline to another. One of our most successful examples of this was Sporting Giants, which, in 2008, identified someone who played hockey and did cross-country running to a high standard, yet demonstrated the physical attributes required for rowing. That person was Helen Glover (pictured, above right) and, after a successful transition into rowing, she recently won a silver medal at the 2011 World Championships in Bled, Slovenia.

Planning for 2016 is in full swing and, over three recent weekends, we have held assessment days for more than 300 athletes at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre, Lee Valley Athletics Centre and the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, as part of our new Power2Podium initiative.

Power2Podium aims to recruit athletes with speed and power, and assess their suitability for joining talent-development programmes in one of athletics, sprint canoeing, sprint cycling, weightlifting, skeleton, bobsleigh and rugby sevens.

Attendees at the assessment days have been selected after completion of an initial questionnaire and come from a range of speed- and power-based disciplines. The day consists of speed, power and strength tests to assess potential.  The results are collected, analysed and benchmarked against the scores of athletes already in the talent pool for each of the seven sports.


Candidates that match or better the scores of those currently in the talent system will come into consideration for phase two and will be given the opportunity to take part in an assessment camp.

Three more assessment days are planned in Stirling, Leeds and Loughborough, and, by the end of October, we will have looked at more than 1,000 men and women, aged 15-26.

Olympic 200 metres silver medallist, Darren Campbell (pictured, below), attended the first assessment day at Crystal Palace and spent time talking to the candidates about his experiences of switching from football to athletics, what it takes to become an Olympian and the transformation in the level of support provided to athletes compared to when he started out.


Representatives from the seven Power2Podium sports have also attended. Ben Ryan, head coach of England Rugby Sevens, who came to Crystal Palace, told me: "Initiatives like Power2Podium are a great way of enhancing and complementing our existing talent-development programmes, and ensuring we leave no stone unturned.  They give us the opportunity to assess athletes who may have all the physical attributes to succeed in our sport, it's just that they have never had the opportunity or the inclination to sample it."

Feedback from across the sports has been positive and an initial look at the test results for the first three assessment days indicate some of the candidates are delivering test results that match the scores of those already in the talent system.

The success of previous talent campaigns, which have produced 65 international medals at junior, U23 and senior level, including 13 at World Championships, give us every reason to be hopeful that Power2Podium will add to the haul.

Who knows?  It could be that we have already uncovered - or are about to find - someone who will be standing on the podium at Rio 2016. Of course, when that moment comes, my colleagues and I in the UK Talent Team will already be focused on 2020!

Natalie Dunman is lead talent scientist at the English Institute of Sport.

Imagine you are a young, male footballer - under 23, in fact - and you have been invited to play for Team GB at the London 2012 Games in what will be the first British representation in the Olympic football tournament since 1960.

But there are problems.

First problem. Your club is planning to whisk you and your team-mates away pre-season – that is, during the Olympic competition which starts on July 25 - for an all-expenses paid working holiday in south-east Asia, where your coiffed profile, and that of your compadres, will generate many millions of pounds worth of revenue for your employers so that they may service a debt which is bigger than planet earth.

Second problem. You are Scottish. This is not an intrinsic problem, of course. But in context it is, because although the Scottish Football Association have agreed, between gritted teeth, and with the memory still vivid of Lionel Messi's court action against his club to oblige them to let him represent Argentina at the Olympics, that they can't actually stop any individual player who wants to step up and represent the Union flag at the home Olympics, they still hate the idea. And anyone playing the token Scot so that the Sassenachs can feel good about their little English British team will be regarded with about as much goodwill as the signatories of the Act of Union.

So, two big problems. But if anybody could fix them, you would think, it is the man who was today officially named as coach to the men's Team GB players in London 2012 - Stuart Pearce, whose nickname of Psycho, which accompanied him through an illustrious playing career with Coventry City, Nottingham Forest, West Ham United, Manchester City and England, tells you a little about the intensity of his commitment to whatever cause he was fighting for.

It is tempting, therefore, to imagine Pearce – a man whose surname, as I have just randomly discovered, is but one consonant away from his antithesis - persuading young players to embrace the Olympic spirit through the following means: grabbing them by the collar and inflicting upon them a rant of eye-bulging urgency with an accompanying suggestion about what might happen if the result should turn out, at the end of the day, and when all has been bellowed and done, to be anything other than the right one.

But of course Pearce no longer rampages gloriously across the playing fields of England admonishing his less thorough and strenuous team-mates of their failings. The man who once advertised his services as an electrician in the Nottingham Forest programme has since acquainted himself with the complex wiring which confronts any manager of men.



In recent years too, as coach to the England under-21 team, he has encountered the managerial cold shoulder when it comes to requesting players for his squad, a shoulder offered recently by Manchester United's manager Sir Alex Ferguson following a request for the services of the young forward Danny Welbeck – whose recent treble pay rise is unlikely to make him any less difficult to tear away from Old Trafford in the near future.

Psycho has had to get smarter to get his results – and to develop a more thoughtful approach which was evident at today's press conference within the dark and labyrinthine innards of Wembley Stadium.

He spoke of the way in which he and his female counterpart for London 2012, Hope Powell, had bought into the Olympic ideal. Both were adamant, for instance, that wherever possible, Team GB's footballers would reside in the Olympic Village.

Having insisted that players from all the Home nations had equal chances to force their way into his squad - "I'm certainly not coming into this job looking to only select England players" – he then dealt with a classic double question as one of the attending media followed up.

Did he then feel obliged to pick Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish players in his squad?

"I don't feel obliged to pick anybody, even Englishmen" he replied.

So it was possible, our questioner continued, that there would be no Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish players in the squad?

Woo-oo, woo-oo, danger, danger...!!

"It's possible there will be no English in the squad," replied Psycho with a little grin. We knew it wasn't that likely either – but his footwork was immaculate.


Pearce was similarly adept in facing the question of whether David Beckham (pictured above with Pearce), who is looking increasingly unlikely to figure in the Euro 2012 England squad, would have his frequently expressed wish of representing Britain at the Olympics.

"I've no idea as yet," Pearce responded matter-of-factly. "To be honest with you, I've not seen him play recently – he's a bit too old to play for the under-21s, so he's not been on my radar..."

So what tactics will the Artist formerly known as Psycho deploy as he attempts to assemble a winning squad for 2012. In his own phrase – "common sense and dialogue."

It's not swashbuckling stuff. It's not scoring that penalty against Spain in Euro 96. But it is what is required, and there is no other way.

His suggestion, half serious, that inclusion in Team GB - which is scheduled to play a couple of friendlies before the Games begin, one of which will probably be a double-header with the women's Team GB side – will mean young players are effectively getting some high profile pre-season training may not cut too much ice.

Pearce's trump card, however, could yet be to inspire some of the idealism in his prospective young selections that clearly operates in his own heart. He really does seem to carry a special feeling for what he calls this "one-off opportunity". And when he says that, if he were still playing, he would jump at the chance, you absolutely believe him.

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. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here. 

These are deeply troubling times for sport. Is dishonesty becoming the name of the games people play?

The question is disturbingly pertinent because of the escalating number of incidents involving allegations of wrongdoing, in one form or another, that are permeating the whole spectrum of the sporting world.

It is hard to find a sport left untainted. Well, we have yet to hear of corruption in croquet or skulduggery in synchronised swimming, but these days sleaze has become alarmingly widespread.

All too frequently sport is on the front pages rather than the back with lurid tales of fixes, bungs, doping, bribing, cheating, you name it.

At the time of writing, there is a court case going in London involving three Pakistani cricketers on alleged corruption charges; Wayne Rooney's father and uncle were among nine men arrested by Merseyside police investigating an alleged betting scam in Scottish football when a particular player would be sent off (at odds of 10-1)  and we are awaiting a report following an investigation by the international amateur boxing body AIBA into alleged attempts to fix it so that boxers from Azerbaijan win gold medals in the 2012 Olympics. Not to mention the backhanders that have bedevilled FIFA and the last World Cup bid.

That word "alleged" is now one of the most frequently used in the sporting lexicon. There are dark clouds of suspicion everywhere and so much of it has to do with big money betting

If I was a gambling man, I'd like to wager that the biggest concern facing London 2012 is not terrorism, transportation foul-ups or an infestation of drugs cheats but the threat of major betting scams.


No wonder IOC President Jacques Rogge (pictured) has asked Games organisers to be especially vigilant in keeping a watch on betting patterns and anomalies in wagering, notably spot bets on the global market.

All competitors, coaches, officials VIPS, - even journalists - are technically prohibited from any betting activity betting associated with the Olympics under IOC "protocol".

The IOC have set-up a Swiss-base monitoring unit to gather information about potential gambling corruption and under the UK Gambling Act all British-based bookmakers are legally required to report any "irregular" bets.

But many major bookmaking firms now base themselves offshore and are not bound by the Act. Which, apparently, because of Parliamentary procedures, the Government cannot amend until after the Olympics.

So loopholes exist because the IOC do not have the right to monitor all bets placed during the Games.

Most of the betting scams originate in the Far East and I know from my own experience of working there just how devious the gambling syndicates can be. This is something of which the IOC are intensely aware.

If pressure can be put on cricketers to deliberately bowl no-balls, how easy would it be to bribe athletes to deliberately make false starts, or tennis players to double fault?

Another slice of sleaze involves more allegations of wrong-doing in snooker, the BBC commentator and former player, Willie Thorne, claiming that match-fixing is endemic and that the sport may never be rid of the taint of corruption. There have long been question marks over the green baize game with John Higgins' six months suspension for failing to report an attempt to fix one of his matches, the most recent high-profile scandal.

"Match fixing has always been part of snooker and I don't know how you can stamp it out," says Thorne. "There have always been games that you knew the result of before they began and I know that a couple of mine were bent from the start.  I don't think the authorities can ever stop it."

Of course, sport has never been all sweetness and light. Back in the days of the ancient Greeks there were plenty of dodgy goings-on too.

If you look back over the past few years, the incidents that have sullied sport are numerous, ranging from drugs cheating to a Formula One team instructing one of their drivers to deliberately crash into a wall and change the course of the race and the entire Grand Prix season.

While we watch the final enactment of the current Rugby World Cup, it is not easy to forget that two years ago Harlequins used fake blood to create a dodgy player swap and even in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago, England players were caught out trying to illegally change the ball.


Now we hear that the Wales coach Warren Gatland (pictured left) has admitted he considered cheating in the semi-final against France by ordering a player to fake injury. He decided against it, he says, but the fact he even thought about it a disquieting sign of these unsporting times.

And what is happening in cricket, well, just isn't cricket. During a one-day game between India and Pakistan, some £650 million ($11 billion/€745 million) was bet in the city of Mumbai alone. It is estimated that in the India subcontinent the betting industry is worth £40 billion ($63 billion/€46 billion) a year.

Much of the corruption that has already been exposed in major sport is just the tip of the iceberg.  Moneymaking scams unquestionably are prevalent and the opportunities of cashing in on novelty bets, like the number of no-balls bowled, red cards issued and easy pots missed are copious and usually untraceable.

And we haven't even touched upon the rigging of horse races.

When the esteemed Clare Balding (pictured) once sniffily dismissed boxing as "dirty and corrupt" the phrase pots and kettles immediately sprang to mind.


Has there been a more crooked sport than horseracing? History suggests not.

Ok, so pro boxing may have had its share of shady dealings in the past, most notably pre-war when the Mafia virtually ran the sport in the United States but as I have written here before in the half century I have been at ringside I am convinced I have never seen a fixed fight - and I am one of life's natural cynics. Mismatches yes; but no contrived "dives".

However, I do reckon I have seen racehorses pulled and at least one Grand Slam tennis final [in Paris] when it was evident that a player went "into the tank".

Inevitably, it is the massive influx of money that has totally changed the face of sport.  There's that old Yorkshire saying, "Where there's muck, there's brass"; now it seems to be a case of "Where there's brass, there's muck."

Fancy a bet?

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.

Sometimes it is best not to Google the place you are soon to be visiting; a rule probably applies more than most to Mexico.

A brief online search of the country told me that drug trafficking and organised crime are increasingly a major source of violent random attacks in Mexico, especially in major urban centres.

One of the more unnerving news articles I came across told of how just last month, a group of gangsters dumped some 35 battered corpses out of a van into the middle of a highway during rush hour.

I decided to narrow my search to Guadalajara, the Mexican city I would be visiting for just under a month for the 2011 Pan American Games and was relieved to find that the competition was "expected to provide relief from the daily mass killings and kidnappings in a country savaged by drug-related violence that has killed more than 35,000 people since late 2006."

This is because the Organising Committee have pumped $10 million (£6.4 million/€7.3 million) into a plan that calls for 10,000 municipal state and Federal police, as well as elements from the Mexican army and navy, to patrol Guadalajara's streets 24 hours per day during the competition.

There were also major construction delays in Guadalajara, to the point where the Telmex Athletics Stadium was completed less than a week before the start of competition, but this was no great problem considering that the city was on red alert to make sure I didn't add to Mexico's alarming death toll.

So all seemed well. That was until on route to Guadalajara; I stopped over briefly in Los Angeles only to hear that the tail end of Hurricane Jova was battering Mexico's Pacific Coast and producing heavy rain around some of the key sporting venues for the Pan American Games.

It was not long after that I arrived in Guadalajara to find the reports were irritatingly accurate and that rain was pelting down with relenting force.

And following a soaking-wet walk to the Main Press Centre (MPC) later that day – due to the fact that I hadn't packed an umbrella - I discovered that the Opening Ceremony may be shortened or even cancelled due to the horrific weather.

But as the day of reckoning arrived, something rather miraculous happened.

The rain suddenly stopped and the sun came out to dry Guadalajara's streets almost instantaneously and the Opening Ceremony at the 50,000 capacity Omnilife Stadium appeared as if it was never in doubt.

The venue itself is one of the more remarkable structures I have seen. It rather looks like a space shuttle that has landed on top of a giant hill.


But one thing is for certain, it can host a spectacular Opening Ceremony.

Mexican tradition set the backdrop for a quite wonderful display of music, dancing, fireworks and even Mexican vaqueros - better known as cowboys - riding their horses at a quick gallop around the centre of the arena in front of the loudest, most deafening crowd I remember sitting among.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge and the Mexican President Felipe Calderón were also spectators of the wonderful event (the latter officially declaring the 2011 Pan American Games open) and so far, things have gone extremely well.

The sport has been top class, the arenas have been world class and as an added bonus the sun has been out for every day of the competition brightening the colourful city where stereotypes like tacos, tequila and Tapatio really are out in force.

That is not to say everything is absolutely perfect.

The transport system hasn't exactly run like clockwork on the busy roads and there have been some technical difficulties – not least the internet continuously going down in the MPC on the first few days here, which I assure you is a journalist's worst nightmare!

The issue of contaminated meat containing the performance-enhancing drug clenbuterol has also reared its ugly head with 19 of the 24 teams from the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Mexico earlier this year having just returned positive doping tests though assurances have been made by the Organising Committee that meat supplies in the Athletes' Village are 100 per cent clean.

But overall, things have been impressive for an event that must continually excel to justify its existence on an increasingly hectic sporting calendar that includes the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games, multiple World Championships, various national competitions and a whole host of other sporting events that fill the demands of elite athletes.

That is the main reason why Usain Bolt isn't here competing for Jamaica in athletics and why Michael Phelps didn't come to Guadalajara for the swimming event.

So is it still a relevant event?

It is a question I levelled at Michael Fennell, a man rather qualified to answer as the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) President, Jamaican Olympic Association (JOA) President, the Pan American Games Organisation (PASO) vice-president and perhaps most tellingly in this case, the PASO Technical Commission chairman for Guadalajara 2011.

"The Pan American Games obviously takes place the year before the Summer Olympic Games and therefore acts as the perfect dress-rehearsal for all the countries and the top athletes," Fennell told me here in the Mexican city.

"Obviously this year the event is being held in October which is a bad time of year for some sports, particularly athletics, but you have 36 sports on the programme here and so while some sports may not be at full strength, the majority are at full strength and you also have athletes here looking to secure Olympic qualifying spots and to finalise their preparations for the Olympics.

"So I think if you ask any of the 42 nations competing here if they find this to be a relevant competition and one that is important for them, they would all answer that it certainly is."


Fennell's comments were quickly backed by Ian Troop, the chief executive of the Toronto 2015 Pan American Games who will next stage the next edition of the competition.

"This is the second biggest big multi-sport event in the world and it will be the biggest ever Games in Canada, including the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, which shows you the sheer scale," Troop explained.

"It is a great stand-alone competition with some outstanding athletes and it also provides an opportunity to celebrate the very vibrant cultures that exist in Pan American.

"There is an element of this being a warm up for the Olympics but that can only be a good thing and major benefit for all the teams and athletes that want to be involved in the Olympics.

"Guadalajara have done a great job with the 'look and feel' because it really does look like there is a major event happening right here now.

"The Opening Ceremony was great – creative but simple with the audience involved – and it is fantastic to see the amount of patriotism from the Mexican fans that I know we will see in Toronto.

"So I think Guadalajara is doing a great job with what is most definitely a magnificent attractive, compelling, relevant event.

"Our job is to pick up the baton and take it a step further in four years' time when the competition will be equally important for everyone involved."

So the view from the ground here appears unequivocally to be that the second largest multi-sport event on the planet is still very much relevant on the sporting map.

And if Guadalajara can continue in the same vain they have started; the Pan American Flame will move on to Toronto 2015 burning as brightly as ever.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames 

What does the scoreline 43-31 mean to you?

If you are a rugby fan, particularly a French one, it will conjure up memories of the 1999 rugby World Cup semi-final in which France came from behind to upset Jonah Lomu and the New Zealand All Blacks in quite the most astonishing rugby match ever played.

We will no doubt be hearing about this rather a lot this week, with the two teams set to clash again, this time in the 2011 rugby World Cup final.

But I have yet to hear anyone predict a classic on anything like the level of the one those of us at Twickenham were lucky enough to witness 12 years ago.

Which is a pity, because this year's tournament in New Zealand could do with finishing on a high note.

The less than enthralling nature – so far - of the current World Cup, plus the news that the next one, according to The Guardian, "had been under threat because the three major southern-hemisphere unions all said they would not be able to afford to take part under the current financial formula", has set me wondering whether a cricket-type scenario might not be poised to unfold in rugby.

By this I mean a situation in which a foreshortened version of the game acquires so much momentum that it threatens to become the sport's dominant format.

It is, after all, now less than five years before rugby – or to be precise, rugby sevens – returns to the Olympic Games.

So we can expect lots of development funding to be channelled into this version of the game, particularly outside the half-dozen or so nations which constitute the traditional rugby powers.

When I interviewed him 18 or so months ago, Bernard Lapasset, the International Rugby Board's President, acknowledged that the Olympics "offer the possibility of making rugby known all over the world".

He went on: "There are countries who will prefer in the short term to invest in sevens to get a competitive team quickly.

"I think Kenya will put a little more money into sevens because they know that their team will perhaps be more competitive in the short term and could get an Olympic medal.

"The same with Fiji.

"There are countries who may make that choice."


He was, nonetheless, not of the opinion that sevens might overtake the 15-a-side game.

"The systems of competition are extremely different," he said.

"Also 15-a-side remains the technical and tactical reference-point.

"What is important for us is to know how financially we are going to turn rugby sevens professional...

"For the moment, it's a sport that is 95 percent amateur.

So there isn't that professional dimension that could enable sevens to rival 15-a-side in terms of players deciding whether to play seven or 15-a-side.

"At the moment they don't have the choice.

"A player who wants a career in rugby has to play 15-a-side because it's regular, structured, there are competitions.

"That will take time."

Yes, it will take time.

And there are other relevant differences between rugby's situation and cricket's: Twenty20 cricket involves the same number of players as the Test match format; you can play rugby in the rain; long-form rugby matches do not last five days.

Nonetheless, if I were a super-rich investor itching to be the Roman Abramovich of rugby, I fancy I might be considering ways of getting in early and supercharging the seven-a-side format, rather than simply investing in one of the top traditional rugby clubs.


The Hong Kong Sevens, which I have not attended but which I have heard nothing but good things about, shows what is already possible.

Attach the five Olympic rings – with their guarantee of substantial international media exposure once every four years - to the sport's calling card and growth could be a lot more rapid than people might think.

And, once interest has been aroused, other potential plus-points of the format – it is more school-friendly, more accessible to the casual viewer, less likely to face problems arising from serious scrum-related injuries – may more readily come into their own.

Plus, of course, if we are thinking about a future involving professional sevens teams, they are potentially cheaper, since you have half as many players to pay as a 15-a-side rugby team.

Rugby sevens is set for a period of growth, of that there can be little doubt.

The interesting question is whether that will fuel interest in the 15-a-side game, or replace it.

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 here

Nike, one of Paula Radcliffe's main sponsors, has instigated a Twitter campaign - #historystands - to support her quest to get the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to reverse its new ruling that women's marathon times set in mixed races are reclassified as "world bests" rather than "world records".

Well, it would, wouldn't it?

Commercially, having a world record holder is better than having a world best holder.

And although Radcliffe still holds that distinction, thanks to her time of 2 hours 17min 42sec set in a women's only race at the 2005 running of the London Marathon, that mark is within range now for a number of leading female marathon runners - including Mary Jepkosgei Keitany, who was just 97 seconds adrift in winning this year's women's race in London with 2:19.19, and Russia's Liliya Shobukhova, who indicated her growing stature by winning the admittedly mixed race in Chicago last Sunday in 2:18.20.

Radcliffe's stance has attracted the support of organisers of the world's top marathons, including Dave Bedford, race director for the London Marathon, although that again is a partly self-interested position to take. No race director wants to see the records set at his or her marathon effectively downgraded - why would they?


The British 37-year-old mother of two, back on course for an Olympic appearance on home soil at London 2012, can see her younger opponents nibbling away at her advantage. Reclaiming her record of 2:15:25 from the mixed London 2002 race would shift that prize significantly further away from her rivals.

The IAAF ruling, which comes into effect on January 1, 2012, cannot be changed until, at the earliest, the next IAAF Congress in 2013, by which time Radcliffe may or may not still be competing.

However, that didn't prevent her from travelling to Monaco this week to personally lobby the IAAF President, Lamine Diack on the topic. Radcliffe, fluent in French and bright as the North Star, is a formidable force both on and off the roads. But Diack didn't get where he is today without being a very wily politician.

So when Radcliffe came away reporting that Diack had appeared "understanding", and was now considering the situation, it could mean anything or nothing.

Commercial factors aside, Radcliffe's position has attracted widespread support from fellow athletes, as the Twitter feed makes plain. Mo Farah was the most recent of those enjoining followers to send a tweet of support to Radcliffe, and to follow the campaign.

The IAAF's decision was rooted in a desire to prevent women being effectively "towed" to new marks by male pacemakers - an option which those in women's only races, including those at the IAAF World Championships and the Olympic Games, do not have.

But it is not a happy position.


How, for instance, does this ruling sit with the pacemaking which has been a part of middle distance track world records since that fabled run of Roger Bannister's (pictured) at Iffley Road back in 1954?

Why is it OK to get towed to a world 10,000-metre record, but not a world marathon record?

More paranoid Britons might look at the IAAF ruling alongside the  decision to reclassify the cycling events after the 2004 Olympics, taking out the kilo - the 1km time trial at which Britain's Chris Hoy excelled - and, after the 2008 Games, the individual pursuit, at which Rebecca Romero was gold medallist.

They might also rope in this week's ruling that Wayne Rooney, England's paramount talent, must sit out the group qualification stages at next year's European Championships following his three-match ban for being sent off against Montenegro.

And more paranoid Britons might wonder if someone up there is out to get them.

But if that may be a line of enquiry too far, the IAAF position goes against a sense of natural justice. In the sport of athletics, records are retrospectively annulled for the taint of drugs. To put Radcliffe, and others, into this territory simply for toeing the line with fellow athletes who included men seems almost indecent.

And once this kind of retrospective manipulation starts, other injustices can follow. Retrospective judgment is often vexed, as the contrasting positions of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and it's contrary baby the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on the question of whether it is right to take away relay runners' medals if one of their number subsequently proves to have been doping.

The question of reassigning medals once one has been taken from a discovered doper has also proved to be a point of debate.

When the extent of the East German doping regime was discovered, almost a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there was a huge debate about effectively wiping a whole generation of sporting records, particularly in the field of athletics and swimming, the areas where the GDR was most ruthlessly effective in terms of results.

It is the collateral damage of such an exercise that is unjust. Who can know absolutely, for instance, if those promoted to glory are spotlessly clean themselves?


Once you start down the road of rewriting history, your mission soon becomes impossibly complex.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last 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. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

The debate about the future of the Olympic Stadium illustrates a very simple sporting truth about this country. The one sport that makes money is football, but only at the highest level.

All other sports, including lower league football, struggle. Any attempt to make money and market a sport other than football, particularly athletics, is extremely difficult and can result in failure.

The Government forgot this sporting truth and the result is that the future of the Olympic Stadium is uncertain and the taxpayer may end up paying for its maintenance.

If you want to judge the dominance of football, look at what is happening to flat racing. At Ascot on Saturday (October 15) we shall have the new Champions Day. The great and good of flat racing including the Queen will be there, indeed she will present a Cup named after her. It will be the richest day's racing ever staged in this country with £3 million in prize money and the best flat racehorses from around Europe on show.

But observe how racing is presenting the day. It has been promoted as racing's equivalent of a day that combines the FA Cup Final with the final day of the Premiership season. It is part of racing's efforts to rebrand. The success of Cheltenham and the Grand National should not obscure the fact that racing, particularly the flat, has been in decline. The marketers the sport hired worked out that the problem was that the flat lacked a narrative and that it needed to borrow ideas from football.

Yes, the flat has great festivals starting at Newmarket with the Guineas and then through the summer, the Derby and the Oaks at Epsom, Royal Ascot, Goodwood, York and on to the St Leger in Doncaster. But there was no single day when the season came to a climax as football does.

In the past, this did not matter. Then three-year-olds went for the triple crown of the Guineas, the Derby and the St Leger. But now the Triple Crown is so tattered that no sensible owner covets it. Hence the need for a grand finale which can be presented as the crowning moment of the racing season. Racing is hopeful that this new Cup final day will work and is making strenuous efforts to promote it. Whether it does or not remains to be seen but the fact that racing is looking to a football idea to rebrand itself shows how the sport has changed and how football has become the religion of the country. Other sporting religions may survive but only if they pay homage to this greatest of British sporting gods.

Those involved in racing are too well aware of how this illustrates the dramatic change in sporting power in this country. As the Newmarket trainer John Godsen put it to me, "Well it's a strange thing. In the 1960s the Football Association went to the show jumping association and asked them how could they possibly get on as much terrestrial TV as show jumping did? The world has changed and our slice of terrestrial TV time and of the press is being challenged by football."


So much so that while the Premiership earns billions from television, and Liverpool wants an even bigger slice of the cake for the top clubs, Channel Four's coverage of racing is partially subsidised by the sport and the BBC has dramatically cut back on the number of racing days it shows.

It is against this background of the mighty power of football that the Government decided to build an Olympic Stadium. But it did not make sure that its main post-Olympic user would be a football club.

This could easily have been done had the original plans for the stadium followed that of Stad de France with retractable seating. This would have taken into account a modern trend in football stadiums in this country (i.e.no running tracks). For decades Wembley may have been the home of football, despite having a running track, but modern football fans and the bosses that control the game, abhor such cohabitation.

However, a Stade de France in Stratford was vetoed by the Treasury on the grounds that it would add £100 million to the Olympic budget. The Treasury, led by Gordon Brown, had always been lukewarm about the Games. Brown's great passion was getting the World Cup to England and another £100 million for the stadium was the last straw. I know this sounds ridiculous, given the total budget for the Games finally came to £9.3 billion, but that is how Brown and his civil servants minds worked.

How ironic this is now. The extra £100 million the Treasury would not sanction back in 2007 is now the figure being talked about to convert the Stadium and make it rentable once the Olympics are over. During this time the Olympic Stadium design has been through more reincarnations than most of us have had hot dinners, starting with a stadium that was meant to seat  80,000 and then scaled down to 20,000 after the Olympics for athletics use. That London needs a modern athletics stadium is a given. But athletics does not generate money and only football could cover the running costs of the Stadium. The Government just did not do its homework properly.

What is more, in building a Stadium like this in East London, it ignited ambitions and fears in several football clubs. Recall that it was the dream of Terry Brown and his co-owners of West Ham United to move into the new Stadium. That dream prompted Brown and his friends to sell the club to owners who thought that they could make a killing by moving into the new Stadium - a disastrous chain of events that has led to the present ownership.

And it is very clear that Tottenham Hotspur's real interest in moving from North London to the East End was denying West Ham this prize stadium with its excellent facilities and transport links. Indeed hours before the Government announced that the deal with West Ham had collapsed, Tottenham were ready to withdraw their legal challenge to the deal provided the Government gave them a letter of comfort regarding the running track. This letter would have said that the Government promised that, even if West Ham moved in, the running track would not be removed from the stadium for many years, possibly another 125 years.


As Daniel Levy, the shrewd Tottenham chairman saw it, West Ham with a running track would be condemned to play in an old fashioned stadium and would be no threat to Tottenham. For reasons that are not clear, the Government failed to provide such a letter, and instead decided the legal challenge was too onerous and the West Ham deal had to be killed.

But the fact that such a promise was not given suggests the Government has kept open the option of moving the track at some stage. If that is the case, then this Stadium story is far from over and we could have a replay of what happened in Manchester with the Commonwealth Games Stadium.

That Stadium was given to Manchester City on such advantageous terms that it was effectively a gift and David Bernstein, now Football Association chairman, then at City, is still immensely proud of having negotiated the deal. And the fact that City had a new stadium was critical in encouraging foreign investors to buy the club. For all the money Sheikh Mansour has lavished on City, he knew that he would not have to fund a new stadium. This football bride came with a nice dowry.

Given the way the Olympic Stadium story has gone, I can see the same thing happening in the East End, not right away but some years down the line. The scenario is this – post the Olympics, West Ham become tenants in the stadium and, after some years, persuade the Government to remove the running track. This would make the club very attractive to foreign investors, be they Middle Eastern or Eastern European, just as Terry Brown imagined it all those years ago.

I know that, as of now, everyone says that is impossible. But do not bet against it. This stadium mystery story could end with the sort of surprise Agatha Christie could not have plotted.

Mihir Bose is one of the world's most astute observers on politics in sport and, particularly, football. He formerly wrote for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph, and was the BBC's head sports editor. Follow Mihir on twitter.

www.mihirbose.com

Barcelona showed that the Olympics can transform a city; every Summer Games since has underlined how difficult this trick is to pull off.

With the endless wrangling over the future of the Olympic Stadium - epitomised by this week's collapse of the original deal with West Ham football club - it is starting to look like London 2012 will be no exception.

We shouldn't be surprised.

"Doing a Barcelona" involves achieving a perfect balance between the stringent demands of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) - which has been spoilt for choice these past couple of decades when it comes to Host Cities - and the city's long-term needs.

In some ways, these tend to dovetail rather nicely.

Take transport, which ironically was the first big concern about a London Olympic bid.

The infrastructure required to bring thousands upon thousands of spectators with utmost efficiency to and from Olympic venues, with a high percentage of people looking to arrive and leave at around the same time, can hardly fail to make life easier long-term for a portion of the city's commuters.


The only exception to this rule of thumb would be if the main Olympic zones were on sites entirely divorced from the day-in-day-out life of the city.

Even if the Olympic related transport routes were not initially deemed optimal by city planners, there is a strong chance they would attract development, with the city, to an extent, reshaping itself to make best use of its new asset.

The Olympic Movement also brings to a Host City the perfect tool for blasting through the red tape and prevarication that often hold up urban developments for years on end: an immovable deadline.

So, whatever else happens, future Londoners will probably have cause to thank the Olympic Movement for improved public transport and for firing the starting-gun for redevelopment of what was, in the main, a fairly rundown area of back-street garages, scrap metal dealers and the like.

It is when it comes to determining what the development should consist of that any link between what the Olympic and Paralympic Movements think they need for a month-long global sporting spectacular and what the city requires to ameliorate the lives of its inhabitants over up to 50 years can be stretched to breaking-point.

Not on every detail, mark you; there is often enough common ground to make compromise possible.


Does East London need a new velodrome? Probably, as long as the British cycling boom doesn't puncture.

Does it need an Olympic-sized swim complex? Very much so - and while a building as swish as the Olympic Aquatics Centre was not strictly necessary, any Olympic park does require some sort of signature structure.

Does it need the sort of housing that an Olympic Village-style development can offer? Again, yes, although whether hefty price tags put Olympic Park accommodation beyond the reach of most local people remains to be seen.

Can it utilise an Olympic-sized media centre? Hmmm, one would hope so, but the jury is still out and one logical utiliser is on its way to Salford.

And the main stadium? That, as so often, is where the circle seems impossible to square.

In West European cities like London, football is the only sport likely to supply a viable week in, week out occupant of a stadium of anything like Olympic scale.


But football, in recent years, has become rich and spoilt.

Top clubs, by and large, want to play in stadiums designed for football, not multi-sports arenas.

And that means no athletics track.

If the commercial realities of life are now such that compromises over such an apparently trivial issue - trivial in the context of a stalled industrialised world economy and a Euro-zone crisis - are beyond the pale, then perhaps it is a mistake to try to use the Olympics primarily as an urban planning tool.

After all, though 21st century retail culture leaves me cold, I wouldn't mind betting that the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre ends up having a bigger influence on the future development of that part of London than any building erected specifically for the 2012 Games.

Perhaps "doing a Barcelona" is no longer possible.

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 here.

Anyone who has seen the satirical television series 2012 must be beginning wonder whether it is in reality a documentary as  the subject of legacy stumbles from farce to fiasco taking in broken promises along the way...

In this week's episode we revisit one of the only two legacies actually  promised as part of our bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, that of the Stadium  (the other was an increase in participation in sport).

First, a recap. What was promised was a stadium which could be used by  the athletics community after the Games. It was recognised that the Olympic  Stadium would need a significant reduction in capacity in order to be suitable  for athletics needs and the plan was to remove the top-tier once the  Paralympics had finished leaving a Stadium with a capacity of 25,000. The  Stadium staying "as is" was never part of the promised legacy or of the plan.

Then enter West Ham United (supported by Newham Council with tax-payers money) and the plan changed. The legacy for athletics was forgotten (although obviously it wasn't sold to the public as such) and the new "legacy" became one of a football club running a multi-event stadium (with athletics  track) to which athletics would be lucky to stage five events a year and gain little or no grass-roots value from. But, we were told, because the track was  still there it was a legacy for athletics.

It was sold as "legacy" so well that the public loved it. So when Tottenham Hotspur entered stage left they were quickly painted as the ugly  sister. And yet, what Tottenham proposed was a reduced capacity (as in the  original plan) and a 25,000 capacity home for athletics (as in the original  legacy promise). But as the athletics legacy stadium would be at Crystal Palace (still in London last time I checked) and the track at Stratford would be  removed, no one liked the idea. Tottenham were intent on seeing fair play  though and court action loomed.


Also heading for the Courts were Barry Hearn and Leyton Orient who (rightly) pointed to football rules forbidding the re-siting of a larger club (West  Ham) on the door step of a smaller club (Orient). It looked a mess; it was a  mess and it was a mess wholly of the making of those charged with delivering  the supposed "legacy" (forget the ones that were promised, we'll never see them).

Meanwhile UK Athletics were so pleased with the whole set up that  they decided to keep their head office in Birmingham and support the  redevelopment of that city's Alexandra Stadium where their new offices will be sited. Publically they always supported the West Ham move because it preserved  the track – although they could never explain what use to the sport was a track  at a 60,000 seat venue which the sport could rarely access and never fill.

Then, all of a sudden they could - well, for one week in 2017 at least.  It was decided to bid for the IAAF World Championships which would require that  big stadium in Stratford. It should be remembered that UK Athletics had previously been  awarded the World Championships for 2005 before embarrassingly having to withdraw on the back of broken Government promises. The sport was given a £40  million "legacy" (they do like that word) payment by the Government (apparently  to stop them complaining) - £40 million which has produced a legacy which can  only be described as invisible at best. Certainly the grass-roots of the sport  have seen no benefit.

The IAAF received guarantees the track would remain and that Britain  would definitely not cause embarrassment by pulling out again. Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson (pictured on right), went on television and promised the nation that the track would remain (probably to yawns all round).


Whoops Minister! It then emerged that both Tottenham (they whose plan actually delivers the promised legacy) and Orient had rather strong cases and embarrassment  was on the cards should they win the legal battle. So the same people who  promised one legacy (well, two actually) and then changed the plans decided  that they would change the plans again.

The Olympic Stadium was suddenly not going to be sold. It was going to  stay in public hands (you could hear the tax-payers cheer). It was going to  keep the track. It was going to stay at a 60,000 capacity. It was now going to  be leased to a football club (no one doubts a deal has already been done with  West Ham) for a rent equivalent to approximately 40 per cent of annual running costs  (more cheers from the tax-payer).

UK Athletics, who are staying in Birmingham, can now continue their bid for the  2017 Championships. They love it. Although how it services any athletics legacy  beyond that has yet to be made clear. West Ham probably love it too but can't  do so in public (yet).

Grass roots athletics can't see any benefit. Tottenham lose out big time despite being the only party apparently concerned about the nation's legacy promise  being delivered. And Orient.....well, it's not clear how this clears up their  issue. If (when) West Ham do move into Stratford, it could well be the death  knell for them....unless they fight it in court?

Oh yes, I forgot to mention; UK Athletics' only rival for the 2017 IAAF World Championships?  Qatar. The only nation ever to have actually delivered a legacy of increased  participation on the back of a major Games (2006 Doha Asian Games). I guess if  we lose we can always accuse them of corruption or has that already been done?

We await the next chapter with bated breath. It would make a great  storyline for a satirical television show only surely, no one would believe it?

As for legacy? As for clear strategy? As for promises?

Jim Cowan is a former athlete, coach, event organiser and sports development specialist who is the founder of Cowan Global, a company specialising in consultancy, events and education and training. For more details click here 

The look on Sebastian Coe's face as he glanced down at the silver medal around his neck after the 800 metres final of the 1980 Moscow Olympics was one of disgust rather than delight.

Bitter rival Steve Ovett had just acquired the gold, the only one that mattered as far as Coe was concerned. Finishing second in his prime event equated to failure. You sensed he might cheerfully have tossed his consolation prize into the nearest trash bin.

Hopefully that is a feeling that will not be shared by the young trio of British fighters who have just returned from the World Amateur Championships in Azerbaijan with silver medals of their own. For, make no mistake, these were no bits of boxing bling; this time next year I predict that at least one - or more - of them will be worth their weight in Olympic gold.

Britain's performance in Baku, where London super-heavyweight Anthony Joshua, Hull bantamweight Luke Campbell and Welsh flyweight Andrew Selby, the current European champion, all won silver, with Liverpool light-welter Tom Stalker adding bronze to a jingling collection , was more than outstanding. It was superb. In all, British boxers have qualified for 2012 in five weight divisions, with the strong likelihood of more to come in the final qualifying event next year.

This is a timely boost for the sport in this country, with head coach Rob McCracken skilfully building on the excellent foundations laid  by predecessor Terry Edwards up to and including Beijing.

Under Edwards GB have had boxers on the medal rostrum in three successive Olympics: Audley Harrison (gold) in Sydney, Amir Khan Khan (silver) in Athens and James DeGale (gold), and David Price and Tony Jeffries (both bronze) in Beijing. Plus Britain's only world amateur champion Frankie Gavin, in Turin four years ago.

McCracken still needs to go some way to emulate that that, but he is clearly doing a terrific job.

My belief is that boxing and taekwondo (aka the way of the fist and the foot) will be among the big British hits of 2012.

And the biggest hit of all could be Joshua (pictured in red vest), the super-heavyweight boxer who is now well on his way to be coming a superstar.


There is only one problem. Will he be able to resist the flood of offers from ear-bending promoters urging him to turn pro before the Games?

The retirement this week of David Haye, himself a fellow World Amateur Championship silver medallist, leaves a charisma chasm in the home heavyweight division. Joshua, at 21, 6ft7in, strikingly handsome in the Ali mould and with a pleasantly engaging personality, is a promoter's dream.

Just over a year ago, when he had been boxing for merely two years, and had won the ABA title in his 18th bout, he received an offer of £50,000 to go pro there and then.

You can bet he could get ten times that amount now- but gold in London would be worth a couple of million.

Therein lies Big Josh's dilemma. Olympic gold would set him up for life, but there is always a risk. He could get injured or beaten and that world championship silver would lose its market value. .

It was a risk the then 17-year-old Khan was not prepared to take, cashing in his medal in return for a seven-figure cheque from Frank Warren.

However I am assured Joshua is committed to staying on for the London Games. "I didn't take up the sport to earn money," he insists. "I did it to wins medals. The thought of boxing in the Olympics gives me beautiful feeling."

So, beauty ko's booty?  We must hope Joshua really can resist any temptation to exchange his vest and head-guard for a pot of real gold.

For I am convinced he has every chanced of taking winning the Olympic title after dethroning the reigning, albeit ageing, Olympic and double world Roberto Cammarelle, an Italian copper, and then, by just a single point (21-20), losing in the final to home-town favourite Magomedrasul Medzhisov (a name that truly must twisted the tongue of the MC).

Had this fight, one of the best-ever seen in the amateur super-heavyweight division, been in London 2012 and not Baku 2011 there's no doubt Joshua would have got the decision.

I am not suggesting the result was dodgy, despite those allegations, now under AIBA investigation, of shady deals involving Azerbaijan that preceded these Championships.

The verdict was a close and controversial as that between DeGale and former amateur rivals George Groves here six months ago. You could argue it either way.

However here is no doubt the cards were stacked against Joshua. It was the final bout of the Championships and the Azerbaijani President was the, sitting alongside AIBA boss Dr  C K Wu, with 800 militia and thousands of fans desperate to see the tournament conclude with a gold medal for the host nation

No surprise then, that Medzhidov got the nod as Mr President warmly shook the hand of Dr Wu.

Joshua was gutted of course, though to his credit accepted defeat gracefully. But a star was born.

So whom is this latest sporting sensation?


Joshua (pictured) is the British-bon son of Nigerian parents, brought up in Finchley, North West London, where he is coached at the local amateur club by the former British featherweight champion Sean Murphy.

As a kid he was a talented footballer and ran 11seconds for the 100 metres when he was 15.

It is this fleet-footedness which helps make him special, a more nimble, less robotic version of Frank Bruno.

In boxing terms he is still a baby, but in his 29 bouts he has shown the vital commodities that make a potentially great heavyweight: balls and a good chin. Plus a decent punch.

"He's a real athlete and a tremendous prospect," say McCracken.

For boxing, London 2012 may well be much more than the Anthony Joshua Games, but few youngsters have progressed as rapidly. His improvement since being stopped in the European Championships last June has been remarkable.

Even more remarkable as earlier this year there was a good chance he would not make the Olympics, or any further international appearances after being suspended by the ABA, having been charged with a drugs offence - not the performance enhancing variety but possession of an illegal recreational substance with intent to supply. He was in danger of being kicked off the GB squad for good.

Joshua always protested his innocence, claiming he was set-up, and  the case appears to have been quietly dropped, much to everyone's relief.

For while he may not have the chat and chutzpah of Haye, here is a genuine heavyweight with a smile that could make him one of the poster faces of 2012. .

He may still be learning the ropes inside of them and out, but Anthony Joshua now has the world at his fists.

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