London 2012: Tom Daley starts London Olympics with Rome gold

Gold on the diving boards of Rome was a reminder of that halcyon fortnight a year ago when daily news of Beijing plunder shone rapture into British households. It was also a taster of what might be in 2012 when London opens a five-ringed window on the world.

The knives are out, of course. Pulseless management consultants rattle off doom-laden projections drawn from financial models born of loveless MBAs. Britain is bust. The country can't afford it. Costs are out of control. The money London is burning would be better spent on housing, education and hospitals, blah, blah, blah.

To hell with your fatal abstractions. Sport, like art, is beyond computation, it cannot be rounded to the nearest decimal point. Neither can the benefits be measured by calculator. What happened in Beijing took everybody by surprise because we had forgotten how to celebrate life, how to reach for the moon.

What price the expression on the face of Nicole Cooke, who pedalled through the spray beneath the Great Wall of China to take Britain's first gold medal of the 2008 Games? Her outstretched arms framed the most uplifting sight a day can bring; a great, big, beautiful smile; teeth beaming like ivory bricks, lighting the road ahead.

Tell me that you didn't go to work that day feeling just a tiny bit better, inspired even to buy a bike, take out a gym membership, or resume one. We devote enough time in our lives to the mundane, grinding through routine without looking up from the floor. The Olympic experience lifted us out of ourselves, turned us into medal junkies for a fortnight and we loved it.

Daley's gold in Rome was extraordinary. Fifteen-year-old boys are not supposed to do that. Thus sport becomes the forum through which we raise aspirations, the conduit via which we communicate the can-do message. The Olympics amplifies the noise, and importantly, projects on to a global platform the deeds of folk from largely ordinary backgrounds.

Cooke pedals around Wales in relative anonymity and penury for four years. There are no cameras trailing Rebecca Adlington through her sporting week in the Loughborough pool. The Olympic athlete lives in a gated community for only two weeks every four years. They do not commute to the playing fields of their dreams in a Ferrari, unless of course they are associated with that part of the Olympic movement that embraces high end professional sport.

Neither do the majority trade on anything but their talent. It is not about how they look but what they do. The Olympics is the ultimate meritocracy, rewarding substance not froth. Cooke's success was the more nourishing for her lack of glamour. She looked like the people we know and love not those enhanced lumps of blondeness rammed down our passive throats in magazines and on television.

Apart from the wholesome, regeneration through sport message cultivated so lustily by Lord Coe and his emissaries at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG), there is also a political dimension readily understood by a former prime minister. Four years ago in Singapore Tony Blair twigged that London was not going head to head with Paris simply for the right to host a sporting knees-up for 16 days in 2012. This is also an opportunity to showcase brand Britain, to let loose some positive propaganda, to remind the world that this tired, old, liberal democracy is not such a bad place to be, that it still has many virtues and remains a substantial hub of cultural civility. It costs money to advertise. The Olympics is a billboard for Britain beamed across the world. And it starts now. That is why Coe is counting down the years so visibly today.

Sport is essentially a trivial business. It is also hugely symbolic. The Olympic Games distils.

The last word...

And Newcastle fans thought last season was bad.

It took the arrival of Kevin Keegan to keep them from slipping into the third tier of English football 17 years ago. The club have run out of Messiahs. The six goals shipped at Leyton Orient tell us that the nightmare at St James’ Park is only just beginning.

Winner...

Bradley Wiggins, by a wheel over Mark Cavendish. The six stage wins posted by Cavendish in the Tour de France need no embellishment. Yet he is never going to win the race. To do that a rider must fly uphill as well as on the flat. Enter Wiggins, a man for all mountains, whose fourth place was the more substantial achievement.

Loser...

David Beckham. Football’s brand leader learned the hard way the difference between profit and passion. Beckham wears the LA Galaxy shirt for money, the fans wear it for love. His full X-rated rant was printed on Sunday and the next time a fan spells out that truth from the stands Beckham would be better advised to keep his own ------- counsel.

News Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk