His name was Evan Baillie Noel and in 1908, he carved his name indelibly in London's Olympic history. By winning the racquets tournament before the month of April was out, he became the first gold medal champion at the first London Olympics.

They were the longest Games in history. They did not finish until the end of October and included such sports as tug of war, polo and even motor boating.

Racquets itself was held at The Queens' Club, better known these days for tennis and where, last year, Andy Murray prepared for Wimbledon with victory over Jo Wilfried Tsonga.

Back in 1908, the club secretary was Andrew Stoddart, former England rugby international and cricket captain.


Noel himself was also something of an all rounder. It helped that he was ambidextrous. As a cricketer, he was good enough to play at Lord's in the same MCC side as the great WG Grace, but it was in the sport of racquets, which he played left handed, that he excelled.

Noel was no stranger to Queen's either, as a student he had won his Cambridge "Blue", there after serving notice of his ability in the Public Schools Championship whilst at Winchester.

Yet many felt he was an unlikely Olympic champion."He looked as little like a fine player of such physically testing ball games as tennis and racquets as could be imagined," wrote a friend in The Times.

Noel's day job was as sporting editor for The Times newspaper but the reports of the tournament did not mention his connections.

His first round match, in a tournament entered only by seven players, all of them British, was against Cecil Browning.


The official report notes "he showed great cleverness in placing the ball, though if Browning had been more consistent on his serve, he might have given Noel a very hard game".

London 2012 chairman Lord Coe said this week that "there are no cheap medals at the Olympics" but in 1908, the official report lamented "so many players either scratched or failed to make an appearance that the tournament lost much of its importance".

In the second round, three other players all had walkovers. In the only match, Noel got the better of Vane Pennell who had won The MCC Gold Racquet in 1907, the report related how Pennell "was not at his best".

In the semi final Noel "had only to play a reasonably safe game to be sure of victory" in a match against the out of form Henry Brougham.


In the other half of the draw, Noel's doubles partner Henry Leaf beat JJ Astor, but in doing so injured his hand. As a result he was forced to scratch from the final and so Noel became the first recipient of the gold medal, newly designed to feature St George and the Dragon.

Noel won the bronze with Leaf in the doubles and also played in the Jeu de Paume tournament. Later that summer, he took up his racquet again at Lord's and won the MCC Silver Racquet, a competition later won by International Olympic Committee member Lord Aberdare.

The life of a working journalist was taking its toll of Noel and on doctor's advice he retired from the sports desk of The Times the following year.

Noel later became secretary of Queen's club and continued to write about the sport he loved until his death in 1928.

Philip Barker, a freelance journalist, has been on the editorial team of the Journal of Olympic History and is credited with having transformed the publication into one of the most respected historical publications on the history of the Olympic Games.

Somewhere now in the light and shadows of eternity, there is a terrific reunion going on among some of America's greatest track and field athletes, like Jesse Owens, Lee Calhoun, Wilma Rudolph and Willye White. And, they are greeting a newcomer.

LeRoy Tashreau Walker, coach, educator and friend, is with them now, having departed life as we know it on Monday at the age of 93 in hospice care in North Carolina.

Dr Walker's death will bring heartache and tears to many in America's Olympic family, but along with those, will come a flood tide of extraordinary memories and experiences for hundreds who had the chance to know him, work with him, or hear him.

The first memory that jumped into my mind today after hearing of his death was a hot July morning in Atlanta in 1996, a week after the Opening Ceremony of the Centennial Olympic Games.

Doc, as the first black President of the United States Olympic Committee, had led the 654 members of the American team into the Olympic Stadium as millions watched. Here he was, born in Atlanta in 1918, the grandson of slaves and the youngest of 13 children, returning to his hometown as the leader of the most powerful Olympic Team on the planet, for an evening capped by the lighting of the Olympic Flame by American icon Muhammad Ali.

I was walking along a pathway near the big stadium with Dr Walker, a film crew, and NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, and Tom was chatting with the USOC President.


Brokaw was interviewing Walker for his special segment 'An American Dream', which featured the lives and moments of unique, special Americans who had realised a dream beyond the usual, and getting there under difficulties and challenges.

Walker's American Dream was one to inspire, and Brokaw's piece on Nightly News was poignant and a testimony to Doc's courage and dogged determination to succeed.

Born on June 14, 1918, in Atlanta, he was taken to Harlem at the age of nine by his brother, Joe, after his father, a railroad fireman, died. According to historical writings, he worked in Joe's barbeque restaurants and window cleaning business to earn money during the Great Depression.

He came back to Georgia for his final year of high school, and despite not playing football because of his small size, he won a scholarship to Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, where he eventually became a quarterback after going out for football on a dare. He led Benedict to a league title and was named as an All-American by the Pittsburgh Courier. He was also a star basketball player and became a track and field sprinter. The school retired his Number 11 jersey when he entered the Hall of Fame.

Then came a Masters Degree from Columbia and a Doctorate from NYU, but that was only the beginning for this superb Olympic leader and champion of kids and athletes.

Another Olympic hero who passed away not long ago, the eminent Games filmmaker and story teller Bud Greenspan, once said of Walker, "Dr Leroy Walker is an Icon. As an athlete, coach, and educator, he has influenced thousands to not only enter the athletic arena, but the arena of life. It has been written 'Ask not for victory; ask for courage. For if you can endure, you bring honour to us all.'" Bud added, "Dr Walker has brought honour to us all."

LeRoy Walker was a master of bringing people together and to make issues disappear. He got along with almost everyone he met, and he charmed the toughest of those he encountered, like former USOC vice-president and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. At every USOC meeting the two endured, Steinbrenner was the first to meet Walker with a bear hug and a joke.


In 1992 when Walker was selected as the USOC's 23rd President, I wanted to take him around the country to meet some major writers, editors and broadcasters, to sort of introduce him, as I did all of the organisation's Presidents and chief executives.

I wanted to try to take him first to Chicago and arrange a meeting for him with the legendary African-American publishing executive, Robert Johnson, the founder of the influential Ebony and Jet Magazines, which had a huge readership nationally.

So, I tried to make connection with Johnson in Chicago, but had difficulty reaching him at first. I did book meetings at the Chicago Tribune and made the travel details.

When I called Doc Walker to let him know what I had set up, I told him about trying to get a session with Johnson and that I hadn't had success.

"Bob Johnson?" he said. "Heck, let me call him, we go way back."

He did, and we had the meeting.

On the morning we prepared to leave the Palmer House Hotel for the meeting, Walker was on the curb with a young woman who was engaged in a chat with him. When I walked up, Walker introduced me to Marlene Owens Rankin, one of Jesse Owens' daughters. She is the executive director of the Jesse Owens Foundation.

It was always like this with us. Go anywhere with LeRoy, and you met the most amazing people, and they came from a multitude of worlds and occupations.

He had a great sense of humour and a way with words.

At a USOC meeting one time in Washington, he tried to reconvene after a long lunch, and it was becoming tough. The attendees took their time being seated and were still chatting and making noise when the USOC President startled them by banging his gavel on the podium, next to the microphone.

"What am I, the President of a cemetery,"? Walker shouted. "I feel like I'm over a thousand folks, and nobody's listening." Order was restored quickly.

I also saw him at the most stressful times within the USOC. Like in Lillehammer in 1994 when we were struggling with what to do about the skater Tonya Harding in the aftermath of the famous attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan. We did not have all the facts, and we were trying to reach some sort of decision about her coming to the Games.

Walker was there, not long after major knee surgery on both sides, and he was not feeling well, and was tired. But late one night, we managed to come to an agreement to let her skate, facing a lawsuit and a lack of evidence, coupled with our inability to have a hearing in Norway. His voice was one of the strongest in the room and, right or wrong, he was heard.

He started a furore in Barcelona in 1992 when he criticised the NBA 'Dream Team' which had been a major problem at the Games for the USOC, related to which outfits they would wear, how they were received and more.


But we had managed to get it under control by the medal ceremony, with a large dose of acrimony.

But at the final press briefing, Walker, no fan of the collection of hoop legends, said he didn't care if they ever came back. "I am not convinced yet we had to have NBA players on our team," Walker said. "With all the college players we have in the country, if we chose the right ones, we can still win.

"We have professionals on the team, that's fine. We have professional skiers and others, and they're no problem. But they should all follow the same rules as everyone else. If they don't want to and aren't here the next time, I wouldn't care."

Vintage Walker.

This man was the US Olympic track and field coach in 1976 at Montreal, America's first black Olympic track head coach. He was the track coach at other Games for Israel, Ethiopia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Kenya. He became the track coach at North Carolina Central, and later the institution's Chancellor.

He coached 11 NCCU athletes to Olympic Medals, like Calhoun, and produced 30 national champions and 80 All-Americans. He was inducted into 14 Halls of Fame and ended up in the best one, the US Olympic Hall of Fame.

Oh, there was much more, the Presidency of AAHPERD, a member of the first Knight Commission, and a big role in the huge success of the Olympic Games in Atlanta.


In a way, his story is as inspiring as the life and times of Jesse Owens, a rich mixture of hardship, determination, success, inspiration and the unique ability to challenge athletes and leaders to excel when they seemed bent on failure.

He dispensed love and affection to all of us who served the USOC, and he was on the other end of countless late-night phone calls from my home when I struggled with a crisis or a controversy. He always had a way to make it seem nothing more than too much starch in your Sunday shirt.

Seeing him again, for many of us, was always like going home at Christmas. Rest in peace, Doc.

Mike Moran was the chief spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee for a quarter century, through 13 Games, from Lake Placid to Salt Lake City. He joined the USOC in 1978 as it left New York City for Colorado Springs. He was the Senior Communications Counsellor for NYC2012, New York City's Olympic bid group from 2003-2005 and is now a media consultant

Last Sunday morning (April 22), Claire Squires, a 30-year-old hairdresser from Leicestershire, collapsed and died within a mile of the finish of the London Marathon. Hers wasn't the first death in the history on the event (though she was the first woman) and the odds are it won't be the last. Such are the eternal hazards of sport.

Altogether there have been ten fatalities since the Marathon's inception, the last in 2007, yet never has there been an outcry for it to be banned, least of all in Parliament, as there would have been had these occurred in the boxing ring or on the racecourse.

I make no judgement on that, except to say that boxers, like marathon runners, always have a choice as to whether or not they wish to take that risk. Horses do not.

It has not been a good year for tragedies in sport with the titanic-proportioned trauma of Bolton footballer Fabrice Muamba's very public collapse and subsequent fight for survival, the death of a lesser known Italian player, another in rugby and of course, the two fallen horses in the Grand National, where the indefensible carnage continues unabated in a so-called institution that I believe has out-lived its place in our sporting society.

Unlike so many horses, 32 of which have perished in the last half century and a total of 70 since the race's inception in 1839.

Death and sport are so often grim companions. Did you know that last year there were more than 800 fatalities, mainly from heart-related conditions, in sport at various levels, from school to professional, throughout the United Kingdom and goodness knows how many worldwide?


Among the unpublicised British deaths was a girl footballer, around the same age as the 24-year-old midfielder, who collapsed while training and died of cardiac arrest despite attempts by paramedics to save her. As in the case of Claire (pictured).

And on Tuesday (April 24) another tragedy, that of a 15-year-old Kent schoolgirl who died following a game of rounders.

Of course, everyone is mightily relieved that Muamba has survived, living to tell his back from the dead tale in The Sun. It is indeed a harrowing, poignant and ultimately uplifting one; and doubtless suitably rewarded – the fee involved is rumoured to be upwards of a quarter of a million pounds.

Coincidentally, this is roughly the sum amassed for the Samaritans on the fund raising website of Claire Squires within 48 hours of her death.

It is interesting to compare the public and media reaction to the near-death of a moderately well-known footballer to the actual death of an unknown fun runner.

Since Claire's tragic demise in Birdcage Walk, cruelly almost within sight of the finish, reaction has been both rational and respectful, almost muted, even though her story is as compelling as that of Muamba's.

She was running for the Samaritans, which offers support for those in distress, following the apparent suicide of her 25-year-old brother eleven years ago after a drugs overdose. He had sunk into depression after seeing his girlfriend killed in a horrific car crash which he had survived.


Within hours of the news of Claire's own death her internet funding page, in which she had hoped to raise a modest £500 ($807/€611), had some 17,500 donors pledging almost £200,000 ($320,000/€240,000). And the money is still rolling in, around half a million pounds at the time of writing.

What a wonderfully heart-warming, sensible and practical way to remember her.

As I say, we have all been moved by what happened to Muamba, but my concern is that the subsequent outpouring of vicarious grief, a veritable tsunami of Pray 4 Muamba compassion, was somewhat disturbing.

Such a mawkish response, bordering, on the sort of emotional incontinence that followed the death of Lady Di, surely would not have been witnessed had Muamba been anything but a footballer.

It seems that the 'football family' has taken upon itself the role of becoming the nation's sentimental conscience.

Rarely a week goes by now without a minute's tribute to someone associated with the game, however remotely, who may be recently deceased or currently distressed.

So much so that I am surprised the black armband doesn't carry a sponsor's logo.

Ironically, it used to be a minute's silence but now it is sustained applause because the fans can't be trusted to remain mute for sixty seconds.


So maudlin has this become that, when Sheffield United play Stevenage on Saturday (April 28), we might even see a display of Pray 4 Ched T-shirts and a round of applause in 'support' of their striker Ched Evans (pictured), jailed this week for five years for rape but still included in the PFA's League One team of the season? Don't bet against it.

No one should begrudge Muamba any hefty reimbursement for his Sun serialisation as there is no indication as to whether he will ever play football again. He may well have lost his livelihood, though thankfully not his life.

But wouldn't it be nice if there was some indication from those advising him that part of this was to be donated to a medical charity, such as the British Heart Foundation, or the East London hospital that cared for him.

Or at least a website set up so the public could respond in a similarly generous manner to the way they have over Claire.

If the millions who Prayed 4 Muamba believe it helped his miraculous recovery, that's fine.


But let's also pray that nothing like this, or the sad fate that befell the plucky Claire Squires, happens too frequently.

And God forbid, certainly not during the Olympics.

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 from Atlanta to Zaire.

There were no oooos and aaahhhs from either the dignitaries or the media seated respectfully in the bosom of the national stadium. Not much of the usual celebrity spotting. In fact, a minimum of razzmatazz.

Compared with the equivalent events preceding the World Cup and European Championships, it was all rather low key.

Yet there was no doubting the significance of today's Olympic football draw at Wembley for organisers of London 2012.

The choice of a former Spice Girl, dressed head to toe in sparkling red, may have been somewhat of an odd choice to help assist with the draw but Mel C had been well briefed and played her part to the full, accompanied by, among others, former Brazilian ace Ronaldo and a pony-tailed Robbie Savage, the former Welsh international now making a name for himself as a hugely entertaining pundit.

Somehow seeing them pull the names out of the proverbial sack hardly got the pulses running. Even FIFA general secretary Jérôme Valcke – who flew straight in to explain the draw and straight out again – behaved as if it was just a routine occasion rather than something special.


On reflection I guess you could hardly blame Valcke. The poor man has been lambasted from pillar to post over his infamous comments about Brazil's World Cup preparations – or lack of them.

This was one event where he could avoid the limelight and boy did he live up to it, rushing away from Wembley within minutes to catch a plane to his next port of call, wherever that might have been. Had Valcke not explained how the groupings worked – in other words that no team could be drawn against a country from the same confederation – and had he not made painstakingly sure that each country was placed in the right pot, you would hardly have known he was there save for his encyclopaedic knowledge of Olympic history.

Gary Lineker as the master of ceremonies did his level best to inject a touch of humour into the proceedings while Zhang Jilong, acting President of the Asian Football Confederation and FIFA's man overseeing the Olympic football tournament, said all the right reverential things.

It seemed almost inevitably part of the script that Ronaldo, looking somewhat more rotund these days having retired from the game, would pull hosts Great Britain first out of the hat for the women's draw. Half an hour later and the entire exercise – for both the men's and women's competition – was complete.

Don't get me wrong. Clearly this was a big moment for London organisers. After all, football and the Olympics have hardly been regular bedfellows for this country. One million tickets have been sold for the Olympic tournament, the most for any sport according to London 2012 chairman Seb Coe. But that doesn't tell the whole story. There remain a further 1.3 million to offload, a daunting challenge given the ongoing debate over an all-British team; indeed whether football should be an Olympic sport at all.


London 2012 organisers hope that today's draw will rekindle national interest. "It's a unique opportunity to share in the spirit of the Games and say, simply, 'I was there'," said Coe. The problem is, no-one can buy them for another couple of weeks.

The matches will take place at Wembley, Old Trafford, the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, St James' Park, the City of Coventry Stadium and Hampden Park. "The bid was very clear – to, where possible, enshrine the Games not only in London but throughout the UK. We are a football loving nation," said Coe.

"I think over the next few weeks and months, now that we know which groups are playing where, that will help. I'm delighted this football tournament will play such an important role in our Games."

And so say all of us. The draw certainly threw up some mouth-watering fixtures, not least Great Britain-Uruguay among the men and Great Britain-Brazil among the women. But the prospect of swathes of empty seats for non-British fixtures must be a daunting thought.  And it once again raises the obvious question. If so many tickets are still available, how come they are not already on sale and we have to wait another fortnight or so? It was a question neither Coe nor any of his colleagues could convincingly answer.

Andrew Warshaw is a former sports editor of The European, the newspaper that broke the Bosman story in the 1990s, the most significant issue to shape professional football as we know it today. Before that, he worked for the Associated Press for 13 years in Geneva and London. He is now the chief football reporter for insidethegames and insideworldfootball. Follow him on Twitter.

Born in 1927, Bill Slater is the only British footballer who can be mentioned in the same breath as Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho, Michel Platini and Lev Yashin. All have graced the Olympic tournament and the World cup finals, but Slater was the first and so far only Briton to do so.

By 1952, Slater (pictured below left in 1960 and right in 2007) had already appeared in the FA Cup final - as an amateur with Blackpool. He was playing for Brentford when the selectors started thinking about the Olympic squad for Helsinki. At the 1948 Games in London the team had finished fourth, managed by Manchester United boss Matt Busby.

This time, Walter Winterbottom, manager of the full England team was put in charge.

The first public trial match was staged at Highbury on a late April evening. The opposition was an England "B" team, which included Jimmy Hill.

"The fact the team is playing professional opposition tonight is one of the first signs of the intelligent planning we can expect," wrote amateur football specialist Martin Lee in the match programme.
The Olympic team lost that match, but in May they headed to Dusseldorf to continue their preparations. As a defeated power, the Germans had not been invited to the 1948 Games, but now their Olympians were about to return to the fold.

Germany's footballers were coached by Sepp Herberger, who led them to triumph in the 1954 World Cup. Germany beat Britain 2-1. Slater scored the British goal and a few days later the Germans won again.

"Great Britain do not seem to stand much chance of success, but from what I have seen of our unpaid stars in their preparations, they may provide one of the biggest upheavals of form in Helsinki," wrote Lee optimistically in World Sports Magazine.

The tournament draw was made by the young daughter of Helsinki Olympic Organising Committee President Erik Von Frenckell. Britain were drawn against Luxembourg in a straight knockout format.

Three days before the match, scheduled before the Opening Ceremony, a party of 30 gathered on a Sunday evening at RAF Bovingdon and boarded  a converted Avro York bomber decorated with the Olympic rings. The group included team manager Winterbottom, FA selection committee members and two referees.

"It was frightening, it went up so slowly. You thought you were going to hit the trees at the end of the runway and once it went up it was a very, very bumpy ride," said Slater. "The journey was not marvellous, one or two members of the team including the referees were ill."

The team touched down in Finland and headed for the winter sports resort of Lahti to play the match. Few expected Luxembourg to cause any problems.

Finchley schoolmaster George Robb – later to win a full cap while with Tottenham Hotpsur – gave the side the lead but it all went spectacularly wrong. As Dr Willy Meisl, a respected football coach and writer observed: "There is little to say in praise of the British team. In the first forty five minutes they had three or four sitters." 


The main culprit was Jim Lewis, an amateur with Chelsea at the time.

"At no time did the game reach a high standard," wrote the correspondent of the Daily Mail who basked in splendid anonymity.

As the match went to extra time, Luxembourg raced into a lead and although Slater helped reduce the deficit, Britain lost 5-3 and were out of the tournament before the Olympic flame had even been lit.

Not until the final day was there a British gold to celebrate, in team show jumping, thanks in part to Harry Llewellyn and his famous horse Foxhunter.


Meanwhile, Slater had stayed to watch the rest of the tournament as the team played friendlies in Finland and Norway before returning home.

"I don't remember huge disappointment," he said later. "I think we were a little bit surprised just how good Luxembourg were. The main weakness was that we just had not really assembled and played together as a team. We were starting from scratch when we arrived in Helsinki, it wasn't the best of arrangements and we were found wanting."

Led by the magnificent Ferenc Puskas, eventual gold medallists Hungary swept aside all opposition, but like many teams from behind the Iron Curtain, they were professional in all but name.

"The Hungarians at the time were quite outstanding," said Slater. "I particularly remember this wonderful team playing in ways I had not really seen before. I pointed out what a marvellous team they were with some innovative tactics, but no one took any notice of this warning that they were rather special."


The Hungarian "golden" team famously beat the full England team 6-3, which included Slater's Olympic team mate George Robb at Wembley in November 1953.

They repeated the trick 7-1 in Budapest in 1954. Slater's full international career began in 1954. He played in the side which beat reigning world champions Germany at Wembley. 

He was chosen for the 1958 World Cup squad (pictured three above, front row third from left) which travelled to Sweden. England drew with the former USSR, Brazil and Austria in the group stages and were beaten by the Soviets in a play-off. Slater was ever present.

Two years later he walked up the 39 steps at Wembley to collect the FA Cup as captain of Wolverhampton Wanderers (pictured two above, centre) and was named Footballer of the Year that same year. After football he had a distinguished career as an administrator and watched his daughter Barbara compete in the 1976 Olympics as a gymnast and then become the first female director of sport at the BBC in 2009.

In 1982, Slater was awarded an OBE for his services to sport, followed by a CBE in 1998.

Philip Barker, a freelance journalist, has been on the editorial team of the Journal of Olympic History and is credited with having transformed the publication into one of the most respected historical publications on the history of the Olympic Games. 

Given the fact that she is Paula Radcliffe's big mate, you would have thought Liz Yelling would be forewarned and fore-armed on the subject of bicycles on the eve of a marathon.

Yelling, who will compete in Sunday's Virgin London Marathon with the goal of earning a third consecutive Olympic appearance as the third British representative behind the already-selected Radcliffe and Mara Yamauchi, had a Radcliffe-like blip in her preparations last month. Involving a bicycle, obviously.

But first, a recap for our younger readers.

On the eve of her defence of the London Marathon title in 2003, Radcliffe told a faintly appalled media gathering that she had almost been put out of contention by an incident that had taken place while she was training in New Mexico.

Having run for 22 miles, she encountered a young girl on her bike who was cycling ahead of her parents. As Radcliffe skirted round her the girl looked backwards to her mother and father, catching the back of the illustrious runner's foot.

"I fell on the concrete and cut both knees quite badly, as well as dislocating my jaw," said Radcliffe. "She didn't come off her bike, though she was crying because I was covered in blood."

It was not the first bicycle-related calamity to have been suffered by Radcliffe. A year earlier, preparing for her London Marathon debut, she was training in Ireland with the assistance of Marian Sutton, twice a winner of the Chicago Marathon.

While Radcliffe ploughed through the miles, Sutton rode behind her on a bike, handing her water at appropriate moments. All went well until Sutton actually rode up her on a bike, leaving tyre-marks all the way up the back of her long white sock.


So when Yelling encountered a bicycle slung across her path during a training run in Boulder, Colorado you would have hoped a few warning bells might have gone off in her head.

It appears not.

Skirting around the obstacle – bad karma, Liz – Yelling suddenly found herself confronted by two very cross ladies carrying out their task as designated "wildlife officers" – effectively park rangers. One of whom grabbed hold of the 37-year-old double Olympian without ceremony, bringing her forward motion to a halt so sudden that she jarred her knee and was forced to take a couple of days off.

Apparently there was some "controlled burning" of foliage going on further up the trail. Looking on the bright side, then, it might have been a lot worse for Yelling.

There was a sympathetic echo from one of Yelling's rivals for the third London 2012 spot, Claire Hallissey. The 29-year-old Bristol runner, who is based in the United States near Washington, recalled her own recent scrape on a training run in the form of an encounter with a fierce and unfriendly dog.

"I narrowly risked getting a nasty bite," she recalled. "I was left unscathed, but the dog ruined one of my favourite pairs of running shorts."


Benedict Whitby, a City of London policeman who will be aiming to join the pre-selected Scott Overall in Britain's men's marathon team at London 2012, recalled his own non-standard training run in preparation for Sunday's big race.

Having set out for an early morning run in a wooded area near Tooting, Whitby became aware of a male in a state of undress – no dress, in fact. What to do? Was he, at that moment, policeman or running man?

Well, it seemed he was running man. "I wasn't sure whether to tackle him and tell him 'You can't do that', or whether to flag someone down and call the Metropolitan Police to say that there was someone totally naked in the woods. In the end, I flagged someone down.

"I found it quite surprising that someone would be doing that at 6.30 in the morning..."

Yes. You wonder if they had got up early, or were maybe just getting in very late from the night before...


For Louise Damen (pictured), who will be vying with Yelling and Hallissey on Sunday, recent training runs in Winchester have taken on a livelier feel. "As the London Marathon has got closer, my local press have been doing a few more articles about me," she said. "There are a group of tramps where I run who regularly gather round a bench drinking Special Brew. Now they know my name, and they shout out to me when I run past. It gives me a little boost every time."

Who knows, perhaps the Special Brew boost will make all the difference to Damen. As for Radcliffe, her close encounter with a teenage cyclist may have left her with a permanent scar on her right knee, but it didn't impact noticeably on her subsequent performance. She defended her London title in 2 hours 15min 25sec, a world record which is still almost three minutes faster than any other woman has managed.

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.

Since returning from my success in Cottbus, Germany I have had a week of just general training in Huntingdon and also a week with the Great Britain squad in Lilleshall. I will be returning to the National Sports Centre in Lilleshall again this week for another full weeks training with the GB team as everyone prepares for the European Championships in May. I have picked up a slight knock to my ankles but I am still working really hard along with the rest of the squad as we finalise and perfect our routines ahead of the final team selection.

The team spirit within the squad is really good and although we are all fighting for team selection to both the European Championships and the Olympics we still find time to encourage and push each other to the max every day.

I was asked this question by Opus Energy: what do I admire most about my team mates? This is always a difficult question as we have all known each other for such a long time now and we are all good friends as well but I guess I really admire all of them because without them then I would not be the gymnast I am today. Here goes anyway:

Louis Smith (pictured first on left) – he really knows how to handle pressure and nothing fazes him;

Reiss Beckford – really has the 'wow' factor with some amazing big skills;

Daniel Purvis (second from right) – unbelievable work ethic, he just never stops;


Sam Hunter – dedicated to gymnastics and a true professional;

Kristian Thomas (second from left) – also works unbelievably hard and has fantastic team spirit;

Theo Seager – very powerful gymnast;

Ruslan Panteleymonov (third from right) – this guy has awesome style and puts the artistic into gymnastics; and

Then there are Sam Oldham and Max Whitlock – both of them are young and very talented gymnasts who push the senior team every day. Two names to look out for in the future.

Daniel Keatings, who is powered by Opus Energy, made history in 2009 when he became the first British gymnast to win a medal in the all-round event at the World Championships. He was also the first British gymnast to win a European Championship gold when he won the pommel horse event in Berlin in 2010. To find out more about his sponsorship deal with Opus Energy click here.

So, one hundred days to go, and counting, to curtain-up on London's East End spectacular.

A cast of thousands wait in the wings for sport's Greatest Show on Earth, with just about every living British Olympic legend who has contributed to the nation's Games history having a part to play in the £9.2 billion ($14.7 billion/€11.2 billion) production if – they haven't appeared on stage already.

Of course, not all can have a starring role but a veritable galaxy have contributed in various supporting roles to leading man Lord Sebastian Coe: Jonathan Edwards, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Kelly Holmes, Daley Thompson, Sally Gunnell, Alan Pascoe – the list is a formidable assembly of past and present Olympians called up in various guises from ambassadors to acolytes, to help keep the public pulses facing in anticipation of what is to come this summer.

Yet there are some stellar names absent from this illustrious platoon.

Among them is Linford Christie, 52, the Barcelona 1992 Olympic 100 metres gold medallist banned in the twilight of a career after a positive drugs test. He cites an ongoing feud with Lord Coe as the reason for his absence from the 2012 front line team, though he is personal coach to several Olympic athletes. He has declined an invitation to run with the Olympic Torch.

More curious is the overlooking of Tessa Sanderson, 56, six-time Olympian and the first British black woman to win an Olympic title (javelin gold in Los Angeles in 1984). Although involved with the original London bid team she was disappointed in not being invited to join the Singapore front bench  line-up and subsequently has had no formal role with 2012, though she says she remains "hopeful".


Tessa is now schooling and raising funds for young athletes in the Olympic heartland of Newham, where she again organised last weekend's Newham 10 kilometre Classic.

Also on the outside of the big Olympic build-up is David Bedford, 62, a former 10,000m world record holder and Munich 1972 Olympian who ends his long-running full-time post as race director of the London Marathon this Sunday (April 22). He has relinquished his advisory role with the Olympic event following a disagreement over the course, saying."It just wasn't possible for me to work with LOCOG."

Yet the most notable absentee from any 2012 involvement is the man who was closest to Coe – in the athletic sense – in their running days throughout the seventies and eighties.

Steve Ovett has not been part of the Games build-up, unlike scores of his contemporaries, and this does not appear to be just because he now lives in Australia.

Last October he was invited by London 2012 to fly from his home in Brisbane to join fellow Olympic gold medallists Carl Lewis, Nadia Comaneci and Rebecca Adlington for the launch promotion of the 2012 ticket sales, but it fell through apparently after a dispute over the terms of his appearance.

London 2012 say they had agreed to pay him £10,000 ($16,000/€12,000) for his single day of promotional work (after a smaller offer was rejected), plus business-class travel and accommodation.

The reply from Ovett's management company was that he would also require four tickets for his three children for all nine days of the track and field competition in the Olympic Stadium, at which point London 2012 decided to withdraw the offer.


Ovett (pictured right), 54, had also declined to cooperate last year on a proposed Hollywood-scripted film about his intense rivalry with Coe (left), saying at the time: "I prefer to leave the past exactly where it is. After Chariots of Fire I think they would prefer everyone to still be wearing baggy shorts, and I can picture the intellectual, clean cut, perfect smile Seb up against 'working class boy'. It kinda sucks."

He also said no to a request to appear with Coe earlier this year on a BBC radio programme about great sporting rivalries.

Yet for the past 20 years Ovett has worked in the media, as a sought-after and forthright television commentator and is expected to be in London working for Australian television.

So while Coe is running the Games, Ovett appears to be running away from them, though I understand there is hope he will be among the Torchbearers as the Flame is carried towards the Olympic Stadium.

But there is no confirmation of this and Ovett has not responded to our requests for an interview.

Coe is not alone in being puzzled by Ovett's apparent diffidence. Although he and Ovett were not exactly running mates, barely exchanging more than a few words when they were competing, they subsequently forged what Coe says is a "cordial" relationship.


They certainly seemed on friendly terms when they last met socially at the World Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea and previously had appeared together to discuss their respective careers and rivalry at media functions during the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and latterly at Lord's.

Athletically theirs had been a rivalry as fiercely and unremittingly combative as that of Ali and Frazier, trading records almost as frequently as the legendary heavyweights had punches.

Yet they actually raced against each other infrequently, the most significant clashes being in the Olympics of 1980 and 1984.

Both went head-to-head for the first time in the 800m and 1500m in the Moscow.

Ovett had set a world mile record, had equalled Coe's 1500m world record mark of 3min 32.1 sec and had remained unbeaten over that distance for three years, while Coe had run the fastest ever 800m, his signature event, the previous year in a time of 1:42.3.

However, Coe was beaten to gold by Ovett in what he admitted was a tactical failure, uttering a terse "well done" at the end and looking at his silver medal on the rostrum, as if he would have liked to toss it into a rubbish bin.


By the time of the Los Angeles Games four years later Coe had the ascendancy, becoming the first, and only, man to retain the 1500m title. And Coe went to Ovett's aid when the defeated champion collapsed, with a virus, at the end of the 800m (in which Coe again took silver), ensuring Ovett received medical attention after being left alone in the tunnel in agony.

Always an awkward, rebellious character as an athlete (whereas Coe was the media-friendly consummate politician-in-the-making) it seems a shame if Ovett, whose old adversary is running London's showpiece, has elected to run away from it.

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 from Atlanta to Zaire.

Over breakfast at an Istanbul hotel a couple of weeks ago, I asked one of Turkey's leading Olympic officials which was the more important: staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020 or hosting football's European Championships the same year.

"What we want above all is to secure one big event," Ali Kiremitciogly, a prominent member of Istanbul 2020, diplomatically replied, hedging his bets the best he could.

He knows full well that hosting both mega-events in the same summer would be out of the question. There may be precedents for countries being granted the Olympics and Paralympics and the World Cup back to back – Brazil 2014 and 2016 being the latest case in point. But in the same year? No chance.

So what, the world will now be asking, is Turkey up to by officially announcing it wants to host the second biggest football tournament on the planet in 2020? The answer, most likely, is that the country has gleaned sufficient intelligence in the corridors of power to take a calculated gamble.

A gamble that says that if Istanbul loses when the vote for the 2020 Games takes place in September next year, the country will still have the Euros to fall back on a few months later, with UEFA picking a candidate in late 2013 or early 2014.

It is, at best, a calculated risk, a juggling act that could backfire disastrously. Turkey may not fancy putting all its eggs in one basket but putting them in two could end up being even more damaging.

And here's why. Firstly, Istanbul is by no means certain of securing the Olympics even though the city is the emotional favourite having tried and lost on a number of occasions. Secondly, it is understood that the Turkish FA has been told in no uncertain terms by European football's governing body that if the country maintains its Olympic bid it can definitely wave goodbye to the Euros.

Michel Platini (pictured below) has even hinted as much publicly. The UEFA President will vote for Turkey, he told his organisation's Congress last month, but only on condition that it drops its Olympic bid. Will Turkey do that? Highly unlikely.


Yet if it doesn't how on earth can it rely a majority of UEFA's top brass to support its Euros candidature and make up for the heartbreak of 2016 when, having gone into the bidding process as favourites, it lost out by one vote to France?

Platini couldn't vote that day because his native country was involved but is said to have influenced the decision big time. But he can vote this time and, despite a strong allegiance towards Turkey, he will not want see his flagship event vying with the Olympics for resources, publicity and popularity.

Crucial to the whole saga is that UEFA has made it clear that if there is only one candidate by the May 15 deadline for applications, that country will be handed the event by default. Turkish officials privately believe that will not happen and that at least two other contenders, including a joint bid from eastern Europe, are likely to emerge from the pack over the next month.

But however many candidates end up putting forward their names, Turkey's safety in numbers policy appears flawed. Yes, it is probably one of the few countries in Europe that could realistically stage an expanded 24-team championship on its own. And, yes, staging the Euros in this football-mad nation would generate massive support.

Turkey may claim to be a modern and thriving economy but right now the country is hardly the most admired nation when it comes to football. Its federation's bid comes amid a match fixing scandal that has made worldwide headlines, with 93 officials, players and trainers currently on trial and Fenerbahçe thrown out of this season's Champions League.


It's not the ideal backdrop against which to launch a bid. Even if Turkey cleans up its act, do its various sporting factions seriously believe it is healthy – or convincing – to compete against each other?

And what will the International Olympic Committee make of all this? I doubt it, just like UEFA, would be exactly enthralled at the prospect of Turkey bidding for a rival event on home soil within the same summer.

You have to wonder, therefore, what the strategy was from the outset.  Turkey knew full well when these mega-events would be taking place and what the likely reaction would be to its firing with both barrels.

Turkey is a fanatical sporting nation, one of the few of similar size left in Europe that hasn't had the chance to hold a major tournament. But are the stakes far too high in terms of the game it appears to be playing?

Andrew Warshaw is a former sports editor of The European, the newspaper that broke the Bosman story in the 1990s, the most significant issue to shape professional football as we know it today. Before that, he worked for the Associated Press for 13 years in Geneva and London. He is now the chief football reporter for insidethegames and insideworldfootball. Follow him on Twitter.

An era may be about to end in French football.

As I write this, AJ Auxerre sit 20th and last in Ligue 1, the French First Division.

There is still time for them to save themselves, but they are three points adrift, six points from safety and the days are getting longer.

I fear the worst.

Relegation would hopefully not be the end of the fairy tale for Association de la Jeunesse Auxerroise, the little club in Chablis country, founded in 1905 by Abbé Deschamps, the priest whose name the club's stadium now bears.

But it would be a very great pity.


The improbable rise of the club from a sleepy provincial town of about 45,000 on the banks of the tranquil Yonne from the French minor leagues to the European Champions League is one of the most romantic tales that the cynical world of professional football has to offer.

With its frugality and its impressive youth development set up, moreover, Auxerre has been in many ways a model club amid modern football's financial mayhem.

Now, more than 30 years after the club first arrived in the top flight of French football, gravity is threatening to reassert itself.

The story of Auxerre's rise is, essentially, the story of two men: Gérard Bourgoin, a local businessman and friend of Fidel Castro, and Guy Roux (pictured below), a manager who spent almost as long at the helm of the club as Castro did at the helm of Cuba.

Attention to detail, a sort of gruff charisma and supremely effective man management skills, rather than coaching ability, were at the root of Roux's success, much the same sort of qualities as have underpinned Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson's reign at Old Trafford.

Managing a football club, he once told me, is "like lions and the tamer.


"When the tamer is strong, the lions sleep; if the tamer is afraid, they eat him."

Under Roux, who departed once in 2000 and again – for good – in 2005, Auxerre became a springboard for some of the top French players of recent times.

Eric Cantona, Laurent Blanc, Basile Boli and Djibril Cissé (pictured below) all spent time there before moving on to bigger clubs.

Khalilou Fadiga, the most naturally gifted of the outstanding Senegal team of 2002, had a spell with the club too.

Roux was also a pioneer at bringing East European players to the west.

Sitting behind his spectacularly untidy desk, he once explained to me how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had played an unwitting role in helping him to add two Polish World Cup players – Andrzej Szarmach and Henryk Wieczorek – to his Auxerre squad in 1980, almost a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"That was an extraordinary adventure because they were Communists," Roux said.


"The French Sports Minister was the Mayor of Auxerre, Monsieur Soisson, and the Polish Sports Minister wanted to be on the IOC.

"He needed the Francophone votes.

"Soisson gave him the Francophone votes.

"Afterwards, I went to see him and said you must give me a signature for the players.

"And he gave me the signature.

"They were extraordinary circumstances."

Visiting Auxerre just after the club had completed the French League and Cup Double in 1996, I learnt how its so-called "Army of Shadows", a 600-strong band of volunteers who still did virtually everything right up to making sandwiches on match days, had provided vital back up to Roux's genius.


Not that Roux – who once spent a month as "player number 29 for Crystal Palace" in the English Third Division – considered any task beneath him.

"We had a washing machine that broke down earlier in the year," I was told.

"And he's the one who decided what sort the new one would be."

Is it still possible for a small town club like Auxerre, however well run, to survive at elite level, as money continues to gush into the pockets of its rivals?

One suspects it is getting harder and harder, although if the player development network that took the club to seven French youth cup finals between 1985 and 2007 can continue to deliver – and if those players can be retained for a year or two for first team duty before being sold on – perhaps it could still be done.

As I say, there is still time for the present Auxerre squad (pictured above) to raise their game and avoid the club's first-ever relegation from the French top flight.

But, if they do go down, I for one will be rooting for them to bounce straight back again.

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.

Sunday week. Sunday week. Just another few days now for the 30,000 or so – I almost said "odd" there, which might have been apt in a way given that it is hardly natural to want to run 26 miles – runners limbering up for the 2012 Virgin London Marathon to work strenuously on not working too strenuously.

At this point last year I was in the same position and, after a badly-timed bout of flu – all right, man flu, call it what you will but I was out of the running for almost two weeks – I consulted with people who knew more than I did about the marathon (not hard, given the size of that category) and was told on no account to try and put in a long run before the big day.

I took this information on board. But the luggage must have become lost in transit as, less than a fortnight before the London Marathon, I set out on a long run, reasoning that I needed to know I could finish.

At 10 miles it felt like a great plan. I was flying along. I had to slow myself down because I was running miles too fast. At 15 miles I was almost euphoric. At 20 miles – just two miles from home – I began to have to work a little harder at moving forward. At 20 miles and two hundred yards I decided it was my top that was the problem – too clingy. I took it off. It made no difference. I stopped again – laces needed re-tying. In truth, I just needed to halt.

A mile from home one of my legs started to cramp up. I was personally offended. This had never happened to me before. I was not a person whose legs cramped, definitively. Determined not to stop, I could nevertheless manage no more than a shambling gait up the hill to my house. Had anyone seen me at that point, they might have thought I was a desperate, middle-aged man who had clearly gone beyond his limited capabilities for the sake of vanity. As if.

My hand trembled with the key at the door. After a cup of tea with two sugars I felt slightly better – that is, not good. Who knows?  Had I not taken that unwise exertion things might have gone differently for me on the day, maybe slightly better. But then maybe I did gain by knowing I could probably go for the whole distance if I didn't do anything silly. I might be better able to judge the relative merits of that question after my next marathon. But whatever the merits or demerits of my preparation, I was able – along with more than 36,000 other souls, a record for the event – to experience the deep satisfaction of finishing a marathon.

Take that basic satisfaction, and increase it exponentially by victory, then by victory at the Olympics, then by victory at a home Olympics, then by victory at a home Olympics in the first marathon of the modern Games.


It is hard to estimate what Spyridon – or Spyros – Louis (pictured winning) must have felt when he overtook the Australian leader of the marathon at the 1896 Athens Games and ran into a storm of patriotic noise in the white marble magnificence of the Panathinaiko Stadium, constructed on the site where the ancient Games had taken place, before delivering his motherland its only track and field gold of the Games.

Asked by the King what gift he would like to mark his achievement, Louis – a water-carrier from the Athens suburb of Marousi – reportedly asked for a donkey-drawn carriage to help with his work. Which he received.  If ever an athlete needed an agent, surely it was he...

But if it is difficult to estimate the depth and breadth of that humble Greek water-carrier's emotions, it is less hard to put a figure on the other tangible reward he earned from his achievement at the Games – the cup which was presented to him as the first modern Olympic marathon champion.

This item will go up for auction at Christie's on Wednesday (April 22) with an estimated worth of between £120,000 ($191,000/€145,000) and £160,000 ($255,000/€194,000).


Bréal's Silver Cup, named after the Frenchman who had the idea of staging the marathon at the first of the modern Games, has been offered for sale for the first time by Louis' grandson – also named Spyros.

"Our family has been very proud to have the honour of looking after this important historical sporting trophy for the last 116 years and my grandfather's achievement of winning the first ever marathon, at the first modern Olympic Games will remain part of my family's heritage forever," said Louis.

"However, it is time to look to the future, not the past – I have two children, and the most important thing for me is to ensure that they are looked after as well as possible.

"It is always going to be impossible to split a cup, so I have decided that the most sensible thing to do is to offer it at auction, and use the proceeds to secure the future of my family."

Similar calculations have prompted sales in recent years of many cherished items of sporting memorabilia.


When, in 2010, Nobby Stiles (pictured) became the eighth member of England's 1966 World Cup winning side to put his medal up for auction, along with other medals and related items he had collected in his career, he explained: "It was always my intention to leave the entire collection to my children. But I have three sons – how do you fairly divide up this sort of collection between them?"

According to one of Stiles' sons, John, the mild stroke his father had suffered in the preceding summer had "speeded up" a process that was always going to happen.

Ill health has played a part in other such sporting sales. Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskás put the Golden Boot he had earned for 83 goals in his 84 internationals up for auction at Bonham's to cover medical bills after he began suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Given a reserve price of £2,500 ($4,000/€3,000), it raised more than £85,000 ($135,000/€103,000).

In 2008 Alan Hudson, the former Chelsea and England midfielder who had to recover from serious injuries after being run over, put his European Cup Winners' Cup medal from Chelsea's 1971 victory over Real Madrid up for sale seeking offers in the region of £25,000 ($40,000/€30,000).

But if the Louis legacy is up for sale, that of another legendary Olympic marathon runner, Dorando Pietri, is not. When the little Italian came to London in 1908 and raced through the streets of Windsor, Slough, Wembley, Harrow, Sudbury and Harlesden en route for the White City stadium on a July day of unusual heat, he repeated a mantra to himself: "Vincero o moriro" (I will win or I will die).


In the event, having arrived first in the stadium before collapsing five times and being assisted to his feet and across the line, neither of his alternatives came to pass. He would have been better, during the race, to have repeated the following phrase: "I will almost win, and almost die, and I will receive a special cup from the Queen."

Moved by the sight of Pietri's struggles in a race from which he was disqualified following an appeal from the eventual winner, Johnny Hayes of the United States, Queen Alexandra decided to mark his efforts at the following day's Closing Ceremony, presenting him with a gilded silver cup.

There had not been time to inscribe the cup, so it came with a card handwritten by the Queen bearing the following words: "For Pietri Dorando. In remembrance of the Marathon Race from Windsor to the Stadium. From Queen Alexandra."


The Italian, who understood only the word "Bravo" as the Queen spoke to him, declared afterwards: "This cup is the balm of my soul. I shall treasure it to the end of my life."

Pietri died in 1942 of a heart attack, aged 56. His wife Teresa outlived him, dying in 1979. They had no children. But, despite dramatically fluctuating fortunes, Pietri was able to remain true to his declaration.

Four years ago, to mark the centenary of that Olympic race – the first to be run over the now classic distance of 26 miles 385 yards – the gilded silver cup returned to the capital for London Marathon week, proudly displayed by Christina Luppi, President of Sport Club La Patria, Dorando's club in his home town of Carpi.

No matter how many runners complete the marathon, no matter how extraordinary their victories, the achievement of Dorando Pietri is unique and unmatchable.

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.

Technology plays a key part in the improvement of all sports – both Paralympic and able bodied.

Whether it be lighter boots or balls for footballers, special suits for swimmers or running blades or lightweight running shoes for sprinters, technology has helped in the advancement of performance.

However, when it comes to Paralympic sport, I am concerned that some people prefer to give credit to the role of technology in an athlete smashing a world record over their actual performance.

This pays a total disservice to the outstanding performances of our elite full-time athletes who, just like their able bodied counterparts, follow punishing training regimes that push their body to the limit.


For example, in the last three years, Oscar Pistorius (South Africa's four-time Paralympic champion, pictured) has knocked two and a half seconds off his 400 metre personal best.

He's achieved this running on the same blades for the last seven years. Very few people give him credit for this and instead prefer to claim he has some sort of advantage.

Oscar's only advantage, like all Paralympians, is his sheer determination to be the best. I'd like to think his punishing training regime, which has seen him lose 17kg, has been the biggest factor in his improved speed.

To further underline my point that the improvement in world records is down to the athletes improved training regimes as opposed to purely the advancement of technology, we should look at the T38 class for athletes with cerebral palsy.


At the last three Paralympic Games, the 100m world record has fallen from 11.56 seconds in 2000 to 10.96 seconds in 2008 (where it was broken by Evan O'Hanlon of Australia, pictured).

The London 2012 Paralympics will be a record breaker with hundreds of world and Paralympic records smashed as a result of full-time training programmes, advancements in sports science and, in some cases, technology.

The Paralympics cannot take place without the services and technology that Otto Bock (the Official Technical Service Provider for the London 2012 Paralympics) provides.

However, world records cannot be broken without athletes who have trained for years to hit their peak during London 2012.

Sir Philip Craven is President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member and sits on the London 2012 Board

The boxing promoter Frank Warren has an MC who, prohibited from employing the renowned Michael Buffer's iconic but copyrighted "Let's get Ready To Rumble" big fight exhortation, bellows this demand as a prelude to the main event: "London: Are You Ready?"

I suggest Lord Coe might hire him to pose then same question to the citizens of the capital as the main event of 2012 approaches with increasing rapidity. The answer, I fear is a resounding No.

Oh yes, LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) are ready, the venues are ready and the participants are ready for what, unquestionably, will be a truly great Olympic Games.

But are Londoners ready? Ready that is, for what is about to hit them once the massed bandwagons of the Olympic circus start rolling in earnest when the Flame arrives next month.

I seriously doubt it.

London – indeed, the whole of the United Kingdom – really has no idea of the magnitude of the jamboree that will dominate our lives this summer.

On the Richter scale of extravaganzas this is a Coronation, a Royal Wedding and Queen's Jubilee rolled into one, a hundred times over, lasting not for just a day, but for around three weeks. Not to mention the three months leading up to it.

Two impending milestones are about to project the 30th Olympiad to the forefront of our consciousness.

The first is next Wednesday (April 18), which will mark the 100 days countdown to the Opening Ceremony. The second is the arrival of the Flame from Olympia on May 18, and the start of a nationwide Torch Relay (May 19) designed to ignite the passion of even Olympic agnostics.

If you think Olympic fever is catching, believe me, you ain't seen nuthin' yet.


The last time the Games were here, in austerity-gripped 1948, it was by necessity a relatively low key production. This time it truly will be the greatest show on earth. With knobs on.

A life changing experience, even? Well it will be for those living in London who can have little conception of the baggage the Olympics are about to bring with them.

Let's start with security.

Welcome to Lockdown London.

We can anticipate an unprecedented ring of steel around the capital, not just to protect 17,000 athletes for 17 days and the following Paralympics but for several weeks before and after.

London 2012 will see the biggest mobilisation of militia, police and security forces since the Second World War and it is certain to impact on all our lives.

More troops – around 13,500 – will be deployed, more than are currently in Afghanistan. The burgeoning security force being assembled by G4S, the world's largest security company, is expected to total almost 50,000. During the Games an aircraft carrier will dock on the Thames and surface to air missile systems will scan the skies.

Unmanned drones will loiter above the stadia and Typhoon Eurofighters will be supplied by the RAF. Additionally, 1,000 armed diplomatic and FBI agents will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11 mile electric fence.


With security checkpoints across the city, stop and search will be the order of the day – or rather many days. This is just the tip of the security iceberg, which will be heading your way soon.

Any protests or demos that might disrupt or disfigure the Games are likely to be proscribed by law.

Even so, as British Olympic Association (BOA) chairman Lord Moynihan pointed out after a looney lone protester put his oar into the Varsity boat race at the weekend, it only takes one idiot...

And you can bet there will be one.

Getting around London by anything other than public transport will be a nightmare because of congestion and road closures.

So much so that the Olympic mascot Wenlock could be renamed Gridlock.

As an example, did you know that the Mall will be closed for weeks prior to the Games – except to Her Maj of course?

I have friend living in Kent who is concerned she won't be able to drive her daughter to school for three days because the roads around her home will be closed for three days because of the Paralympics!

Similarly a cul-de-sac where my son lives in Surrey will be cordoned off as a no-go area for the the duration of the Olympic cycling road race.

Inevitably a "Them and Us" divide will be created by the controversial Olympic lanes, a city-wide system which will allow 4,000 VIPs from the Olympic family – and the media and sponsors – to be shuttled to and from the Olympic Park. For ordinary Londoners, the aggravation will be immense. But it will have to be tolerated.


And as for visitors? Heathrow staff are already warning that as the theme tune for the wonderful BBC2 mockumentary TwentyTwelve goes, There will be Trouble Ahead.

Yes, of course, there will be special provision for speedy passage for the "Olympic Family" but a colleague, travelling on an American passport took two hours to get through Terminal 5 recently. She was told: "If you think this is bad, wait until the Olympics".

Shopkeepers now have Prliamentary permission to open all day if they so wish, though in certain areas they will only be able to receive deliveries at night.

Then there's the hotels and taxis shamelessly hiking their prices.

And we are warned that the Olympics could spark a feeding frenzy of organised crime.

That's the downside. So will it all be worth it?

Absolutely. One hundred per cent Yes.

Once the rain holds off for Danny Boyle's Opening Ceremony to leave the watching world open-mouthed in awe, and the British gold rush starts – hopefully, immediately with cyclist Mark Cavendish – then all the hassles, the hold-ups and assorted other inconveniences will be forgiven if not forgotten. Even if there's a bit of an overspend.

And when Jacques Rogge proclaims London the Greatest Ever Games, and for once means it, the plaudits will be piled as high as the Shard.

Meantime, Let's Get Ready to Grumble.

We'll happily save the cheering until later.

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 from Atlanta to Zaire.

Regular readers of this column  will know that I frequently return to the topic of strategy for the development sport and the ineptitude of consecutive governments on the subject.

However, as with all aspects of life there are also a number of apparently non-sporting Government decisions which will have a significant effect on grass-roots sport and its ability to grow – or even stand still.

As any half-way competent strategist will tell you "cause and effect" should always be considered as "big picture" considerations where, unfortunately, government tends to only consider decisions in one area in isolation. In Government initiative seemingly always trumps strategy.

In the rush to recognise the value that Lottery funding has brought to sport in this country we sometimes forget that, at the grass-roots, it is not even in the top three of biggest funders. By far the largest financial contributors to sport are the many unpaid volunteers who keep it running. Their contribution is not limited to the obvious travel and time but is often invisible such as the North London coach I spoke to who pays entry fees for the young athletes he looks after because without they would not be able to afford to compete.

Following the volunteers in terms of contribution is the "bank of mum and dad" – a bank that pays those entry fees when it can afford them as well as being kit purchaser/washer, taxi service, funder, sponsor and more.

With VAT seemingly set to remain at 20 per cent for the foreseeable future this is the first area of negative impact on sport. Equipment costs more, facility hire costs more, travel costs more; in fact everything costs more. At the grass-roots end of sport, not an essential item of spending for the vast majority of the population, as the financial pressure builds sport becomes an area where cut backs can be made.

Fuel is an essential commodity but has been far from exempt from not just a single tax but double taxation as the seemingly ever-rising fuel levy adds to the burden of VAT. This stealth tax on small business - which many small sports clubs are - is also taxation on both participation in and the watching of sport. As with VAT, as family budgets are stretched difficult choices have to be made and little Johnny's badminton lesson will more often than not be seen as less essential than getting to work , paying the bills or putting food on the table. It should be remembered that tax on fuel is a tax on everything reliant on fuel for its production or delivery – pretty much everything else!

Public transport might be an option but buses and trains do not always run according to where sport needs them to run at the times it needs them to and besides, with many families 'time-poor' the added time public transport travel can take makes it less likely to be utilised, especially outside of cities like London where it is less plentiful. And for longer trips for sports fans and away team travel the train, already expensive is now having £3.6 billion a year of subsidies removed by the government.

The third largest funder of sport in this country is local authorities who, as we all know, are facing significant cuts. Like it or not, those cuts will most likely fall in areas in which those authorities are not bound by statutory protection; other than playing fields that is all facilities, sports development, community clubs, sports inclusion projects.


Need I list them all?

I am on record as supporting sports facilities, sports development and community sport as candidates for statutory protection - as they are for many of our European neighbours - and would suggest that any government serious about a lasting sports participation legacy would make this a key component of any integrated strategy for the development of sport in the UK – a strategy that no Government has yet seen fit to produce.

Indeed, it is the lack of investment in good strategy which most undermines grass-roots sport in this country. In June last year a Sky Sports News special report on legacy highlighted the problem of local authorities being unable to fund sports facilities when using Finsbury Park athletics track as a back drop.

One of the programme's expert panel, former NBA star John Amaechi made the point, "What's going to happen here at the Olympics could be worse even than just people not participating afterwards, it could be that you excite young people to play, they go out into their communities to look for where to play and they come here and they realise it's grassed over, it is no longer a facility where they can get the right kind of coaching and the right kind of development. That would be a true tragedy."

The local facility might be closed, mum and dad can't afford to get them to the nearest one still open and if they can, the volunteers can't afford to offer the level of support they once did and there is no proper strategy aimed at addressing these issues or the overall development of sport properly.

Some legacy.

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.