The Big Read

By David Gold

With eight sports bidding for inclusion on the Olympic programme in 2020, and just one set to be given the nod by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Antonio Espinos has his work cut out.

The Spaniard is the President of the World Karate Federation (WKF), and in between trips around London during this summer's Olympic Games, Espinos met with insidethegames at the Park Lane hotel where he has been busy working on the 2020 bid.

The IOC could not have been in any closer proximity, meaning London 2012 was particularly crucial for karate, as it was for their fiercest rivals, squash, baseball and softball. Like them, karate is hoping to make it third time lucky after bids for 2012 and 2016 failed. In the case of their bid to be a part of the Olympics which have just concluded in London, karate was especially unfortunate, having won the support of a majority within the IOC, but not quite the two thirds of the voters they needed to win that particular race. For 2020, wushu, roller sports, wakeboard and climbing are also in the running to make it onto the Olympic programme.

It's a personal tale of heartbreak, grief, frustration and fear – and International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge is being urged to try and resolve it once and for all.

Six years ago, on July 15, 2006, the National Olympic Committee of Iraq (NOCI) was holding its AGM in central Baghdad when a group of unknown gunmen, unmasked and in broad daylight, burst in and kidnapped its President Ahmed Al-Samarrai along with the majority of his colleagues.

Thirteen of them were released shortly afterwards but the rest, including Al-Samarrai, disappeared and have never been seen since.

By Mike Rowbottom at the Olympic Stadium in London

In the space of less than an hour here the host nation won three – yes, three – of the five track and field gold medals on offer through Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon, Mo Farah in the 10,000 metres and, rather more unexpectedly, Greg Rutherford in the long jump.

The athletes thus achieved the hat-trick that had so narrowly eluded Britain's rowers earlier in the day as they had to settle for two golds and a silver.

By Louisa Gummer

Some £27 million ($42.5 million/€34.5 million), 148 hours of rehearsals, but not one sequin.

It's been a long, long time since that first audition way back in November. I have learned many things during that period. New phrases: for example "de-bibbing" (to remove the bib you are wearing) and "pre-stacking the vom" (filling up the entrance with the people who come on after you, before you then go in too). New skills: like taking a hedge down a flight of stairs in time to an insistent rhythm without falling over. New facts: granulated tea was invented by someone who had blatantly never tasted actual tea in their lives and hot chocolate stains concrete! I have also learned a lot about myself – my boredom threshold is seemingly quite low for instance. The following notes from my rehearsal diary might give you a taste of what it was really like to be a volunteer performer at what has been described as "the biggest show on earth."

By Mike Rowbottom

This was a stripped down Opening Ceremony, revealing the truth of so many elements of Britain's history that we take as read in a vivid and beautifully modulated show which presaged a coup de theatre which confounded all the – heated - discussion about Who Would Light The Olympic Cauldron.

Not David Beckham. Nor Daley Thompson, nor Kelly Holmes, nor even five-times Olympic champion Sir Steve Redgrave, although all played their part in bearing the Torch on the final stages of long journey to this stadium in east London.

Finally, the ancient Flame was transferred to its temporary resting place by collective youth – seven young athletes nominated by seven of Britain's greatest Olympians and acting jointly to ignite a "Flame of Unity" composed of copper "petals" within a giant bowl in the centre of the stadium which formed itself into a group of firebrands.

 By Philip Barker

It has been described as the first gold medal of the Games.

For the man who revived the Olympics, the Opening Ceremony was much more than that.

"It must involve solemnity and a ceremonial that must always be in keeping with the prestige that warrants its noble titles and stay strictly within the limits of good taste and moderation," wrote Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

London 2012 certainly seems to have got its Olympic Rings in a twist over the embarrassing security cock-up that has some suggesting the wheels are coming off Lord Coe's hitherto smooth-rolling bandwagon. That is clearly not the case, although they have been wobbling a bit of late.

Wherever the overall responsibility lies for the failure to hire sufficient security guards, the appointed providers G4S should have received a P45 when the deficiency was revealed.

Instead it is apparently now down to the Government's Plan B, in which war-weary troops and hastily-trained students make up the numbers to help ensure the Games protection is adequate. No gold medals there then.

By Mike Rowbottom 

All-round talents. They're good looking. They're bright. They're usually musical. Generally speaking, they're sporty. And more often not, they're nice as well. God.

Olympic sports, in my experience, are a particularly rich habitat for the all-round talent. Rowing is one of the worst offenders – sorry, paramount examples. Bodies beautiful on the water and brains bountiful on dry land. It is a phenomenon which seems to hold good all the way through the sport.