Close your eyes and think of the Olympic Games. What do you see? An image. It has to be. Of something.

In just over a week, the Sochi Winter Olympics will add infinite additional pictures to that potential store and the media's great game within the Games is already underway: that of predicting where and when the enduring images of this latest global sporting gathering will present themselves. As the Olympic flame makes its way through the volatile Chechnya region en route to its coastal venue, let us all hope those images will have to do solely with the world of sport.

For me, and doubtless many others, Games past are like a slide show. I close my eyes and select - Sydney 2000. Click. Australia's victorious 400m runner Cathy Freeman sitting on the track, momentarily emptied of all emotion, the eye in a storm of approbation for a hugely anticipated home gold medal performance.

A stunned Cathy Freeman takes in her achievement in winning the Olympic 400m title in front of a home crowd at the Sydney 2000 Games ©AFP/Getty Images

Click. The face of a friendly woman volunteer at the Dunc Gray velodrome who tells me, regretfully, that she wasn't supposed to speak to me. Never could work out why. Click. Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat, side by side in the final 10 metres of the 10,000 metres, teeth bared, greats in extremis.

And select - Lillehammer 1994. Click. Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan on the same practice ice at the Hamar Arena amid the media frenzy over the attack on Kerrigan of which Harding was suspected to have had foreknowledge. Apparently oblivious to each other as every spectator in the venue makes the connection between them.

Click. The stricken expression on the face of British short track skater Wilf O'Reilly as he explains how his skate blade has broken for the second time during competition.

Tonya Harding (left) and Nancy Kerrigan not noticing each other during practice before their skating event at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games ©AFP/Getty Images

And select - Salt Lake City 2002. Click. The ceiling of the dark and claustrophobia-inducing passageway through which I had to process with a dense mass of people en route to the stadium for the Games Opening Ceremony.

Click. The figure of Australian short track skater Steven Bradbury gliding gently over the finish line as the rest of the field lay next to the barriers where they had slid on the final bend of the 1,000m final. The last man standing could have skated over the line backwards to claim gold, had he wished.

Australia's Steven Bradbury, last man standing in the 1,000m short track speed skating final at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, glides over the line to claim gold ©Getty Images

Click. Sheryl Crow complaining about the cold as she played one of the outdoor concerts for Games goers. (What did she expect? Sunshine?)

Night after night at the London 2012 Games camera lights flickered around the packed Olympic arena as those packed in to watch the action in person garnered their own special images. The passage of those who thronged the concourses during those broadly - and mercifully - warm summer weeks would be halted on a random but frequent basis as people stopped to grab pictures on their mobiles. Millions and millions of images...

Among those collecting, but in a more orderly and perhaps more serious fashion, was Lidia Lundy, a young Russian woman who had moved to London some years earlier with a view to becoming involved in the 2012 Games, and who was one of the Games Makers who helped make the Olympicsa and Paralympics such a warm and successful occasion, working principally at the North Greenwich (O2) Arena.

Games Makers at the London 2012 Games featured in new book Inspired By The Games ©Lidia Lundy

There she joined a team which included Mike Blake, a former British Olympic Association employee. He was renewing his connection with the Olympics more than 30 years after being involved in the controversy over whether British competitors should boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics, in line with the wishes of the British - and, of course, American - Government in the wake of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.

Photographs taken in and around the Games by Lidia have now been published in a book entitled Inspired By The Games - Images of London 2012 (Indigo, £12.49, available via [email protected]. Blake has written a foreword article recalling the shortlived plans drawn up by the BOA's then chairman, Sir Denis Follows - encouraged by the Greater London Council leader Horace Cutler - for the capital to host the 1988 Olympics, thus preserving a 40-year cycle following the 1908 and 1948 Games.

Good idea. Bad time. Once the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took place the then US President Jimmy Carter insisted on the US boycotting the Moscow Games of 1980 and, in Blake's words, "seduced Britain's relatively new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher into expressing support."

The US President, Jimmy Cartner, persuaded Margaret Thatcher to support his idea of boycotting the 1980 Moscow Games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ©AFP/Getty Images

The article's headline: "Thirty-one glorious days that were thirty-four years in the making..." points the way to the joyous celebration which took place not 40 but 64 years after the 1948 London Olympics, which is itself celebrated in Lundy's pictures.

In Lundy's own recollections, life at the Games is described as "an every day festival". She adds: "I wouldn't call it a job, even after a 10-12 hour working day at the North Greenwich Arena. I gave it all, I took it all and I am happy to look back on these 'the best of times' and to share my personal images with you."

The images themselves chime in with many of the enduring memories of these Games - the excitement around the venues, the helpfulness and cheerfulness of the Games Makers, the stupendous scale of the Opening Ceremony, with its Mary Poppins figures, pictured here during the rehearsal, apparently floating down into the Stadium from the night sky, and, at the heart of things, the colour and conflict of Olympic and Paralympic competition, with much of the former being contributed by the crowds who flocked in each night to the North Greenwich Arena for gymnastics, trampoline, basketball and wheelchair basketball.

The National Health Service showcased at the Opening Ceremony rehearsal and captured in the lens of a Russian Games Maker ©Lidia Lundy



These are evocative images of the last Olympics. Now prepare for the latest batch...

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.