Yet the road to those Games began 30 years ago in another part of the city. This week in 1985 they launched the first British bid since the London hosted the 1948 Games. Birmingham, not London, was chosen to carry the Olympic torch for Great Britain.

In the mid-eighties cities clamoured to bid for the Games where only a few years earlier they had made their excuses and stood aside. So why the renewed enthusiasm? The 1984 Los Angeles Games had transformed the Olympic Movement and made a staggering profit of some $225 Million. Amsterdam Barcelona,Belgrade Brisbane and Paris were already well on the way with detailed candidate dossiers by the time three British cities announced their intent in the summer of 1985.

Had Britain's been successful, the Games would have been very different to those seen in 2012. As it turned out, three successive bids from Britain ended in failure but with valuable lessons for those prepared to listen.

The Lord Mayor of London Sir Alan Traill struck a confident note as he launched the bid for a city once said to be paved with gold. “If there is any city within the United Kingdom which has the capabilities and commitment to see this through, it has to be London," he said.

They also had one very prominent athlete supporting them. "If we are going to get votes from the IOC (International Olympic Committee) it has got to be for London," said Sebastian Coe, still basking in the glow of winning a second consecutive Olympic 1500 metres gold medal at Los Angeles the previous year. 

The proposal for 1992 had one very obvious difference from the Olympics Coe led with such flair in 2012. “A North West London Games based around Wembley Stadium is an attractive and practical proposition,” claimed the bid dossier produced the city of London-backed consortium which included Wembley’s Jarvis Astaire and Brian Wolfson . Their calculations were based on a feasibility study made in 1979.

The planned Athletes’ Village was to be built close to Wembley in the North London suburb of Barnet, the opposite side of the city from where the Olympic Village for 2012 was eventually to be built.

In 1985 London’s planners had their fair share of ifs buts and maybes. They offered an alternative scheme centred on Docklands but warned that this was a much more expensive option.

They were not yet sure about the aquatics centre either. If not a new swimming pool altogether at Wembley then the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace was one possibility in conjunction perhaps with a pool at Tooting Bec in South London.

There were some areas where London’s project for 1992 coincided with that for 2012.A cycling velodrome was pencilled in for Lee Valley. It was almost a quarter of a century later that the velodrome was finally inaugurated in the Stratford Olympic park in time for 2012.

London’s documents also spoke of a new indoor arena called “The London Dome”. This was most likely to be built in Docklands. It took another decade before it was built and it did eventually stage Olympic gymnastics and Wimbledon did stage lawn tennis.

The famous twin towers of Wembley Stadium were demolished a little more than a decade later and the new ground, opened in 2007 only held football in 2012.

Manchester’s effort was spearheaded by the enthusiastic boss of the city’s Palace Theatre Bob Scott.

They recruited the fabulously wealthy Duke of Westminster as bid President and from the off they involved financial advisors Arthur Young, who then had a 30-year-old executive called Rick Parry working for them. He remained a key figure in future Manchester bids and was later to become even better known as FA Premier League chief executive.

Manchester claimed £250,000 had been raised in the first ten days since they announced their interest and confidently forecast a profit. “Los Angeles means that the Games will be in surplus for ever more or they should be," said Scott at the time. "We are very confident the Games will be viable."

They even took a leaf out of the Los Angeles book and promised some of the surplus would be for “a fund established to ensure that the Olympic Movement advances the education and development of the young people of Manchester”. In California, Anita DeFrantz’s LA 84 Foundation had been set-up with similar goals and has flourished for more than 30 years.

The central theme of Manchester’s planning was an Olympic park along the banks of the Ship canal. There never was an Olympic Village in Manchester but the canal side complex was realised as a Sports City for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. It regenerated the Eastlands region of the city with a brand new velodrome, the emblem of British success in track cycling and a Games Stadium which was later modified to accommodate FA Premier League team Manchester City. The success of the Commonwealth Games was also seen as a vital stepping stone towards London 2012.

Led by the former Minister for Sport Denis Howell, Birmingham’s bid in 1985 called on the highly respected athletics coach and commentator Ron Pickering. Their concept of an Olympic complex at the city’s National Exhibition Centre was developed in association with the engineering group Ove Arup.

It was considered a very good technical bid. Their philosophy “to hand the Games back to the Athletes” impressed voting members of the National Olympic Committee and Birmingham were chosen as the British candidate for 1992. It also received a ringing royal endorsement.

”The concept of staging nine sports under one roof at the National Exhibition Centre is certainly a very attractive one,” said the Princess Royal, President of the British Olympic Association.

In 2012, a similar idea was seen at an Olympic Park which staged athletics, aquatics , track and bmx cycling, handball, hockey basketball, modern pentathlon and water polo and in the use of ExCel for many combat sports.

Back in 1985, Birmingham deputy Council leader Ken Barton admitted: “Barcelona Have got a hell of a lead with the work they have been doing”

His team did their best to catch up. They had also to repair the damage of Britain’s reputation in sport. England’s football clubs were banned from European competition after a football riot at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels left 39 dead. The Olympic Family remembered that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had supported 1980 Moscow Olympic boycott and her ambivalence to sanction those who maintained sporting contact with South Africa in the Apartheid era was another obstacle.

Although Howell was a skilled politician, who claimed that enquiries about investment in the city trebled within a month after Birmingham was chosen as the British Olympic candidate, he soon also found the cost of bidding spiralled, despite sponsorship, including a deal with British Airways who provided £50,000 in free flights.

When all was said and done Birmingham’s "Heart of Gold" campaign for 1992 eventually cost £2 million, including a helicopter to bring IOC President Samaranch to Birmingham after the Wimbledon finals and a rather dubious pop song  “Bring the Games to Birmingham!”. It was still a fraction of the sums laid out by eventual winners Barcelona. Birmingham did their best to visit or receive as many IOC members as possible but it was always a race against time in 15 months before decision day in October 1986. It is also fair to say that, right from the outset, there was plenty of scepticism around Britain about Birmingham hosting an Olympic Games. 

Coe joined 1972 Olympic pentathlon champion Mary Peters, 1969 Wimbledon singles champion Ann Jones and other great British sporting personalities in Lausanne to promote the bid in the final hours He was no stranger to addressing the IOC and had been praised for his speech at their Congress in Baden Baden in 1981. He did not play a prominent part in Birmingham’s pitch. It was different 20 years later in Singapore, where his role was pivotal in a superb London presentation which included an evocative bid film highlighting Olympic ambition around the world.

“Birmingham awaits with confidence your decision and assures you the Olympic spirit will be safe in our hands,” Howell told the IOC members.

Right up to the eleventh hour, Birmingham hoped for a ringing endorsement from the Prime Minister but Mrs Thatcher did not travel to Lausanne sending only Sports Minister Dick Tracey. By contrast The Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez was there. His high profile presence signalled his Government's financial support for Barcelona as they swept to victory

“If we’d had the whole hearted support of the Government it would have been a different ball game,” said Birmingham Council Leader Dick Knowles when the result was finally known.

It was a lesson which the British eventually took to heart. In 2005, Tony Blair’s enthusiastic lobbying was considered a key reason why London won a narrow contest. They were also at great pains to emphasise that the bid belonged to the whole country. Their publicity machine highlighted events to be held outside London.

This was another lesson from Birmingham. They contacted other parts of the country to help with financing their bid. "The response level has been quite low and that’s disappointing,“ said commercial manager Tony Freer at the time. ”People have not recognised that it isn’t just Birmingham’s bid it is Britain’s bid.”

Two further bids from Manchester for 1996 and 2000 also failed to convince the British Olympic Association that only a bid from London would do. It proved a sound call.

Birmingham never did build their fantastic Olympic stadium but they eventually did stage an Olympic event opened by The Queen. In 1991 they hosted a Session of the IOC. It was there that current President Thomas Bach and his predecessor Jacques Rogge were first elected.