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The myths around London's Olympics
Published: August 25 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 25 2008 03:00
The last gold medal has been won, the last world record broken, and the Olympic flag is now in the care of London's mayor, Boris Johnson. What now?
As far as the games themselves are concerned, China delivered the good, the bad, and the odd. The opening and closing ceremonies and the sporting venues were astonishing; if London's experience with Picketts Lock, the Millennium Bridge, the Dome, Wembley Stadium and Terminal Five is representative, then the UK will be hard-pressed to match them.
In other respects it will be easy to surpass China's benchmark: filling empty seats and allowing journalists access to the internet should do the trick, as will not jailing citizens who respond to an invitation to apply for a protest permit.
It was reassuring to discover that China's sensational opening ceremony relied on some computer wizardry. The British opening ceremony should probably be more modest - bonfires, union-flag bowler hats, and lots and lots of bunting should do the trick - even if there is a precedent for using performance-enhancing techniques. The 2012 organising committee may even decide to take up an idea first aired in these columns: to organise a dance-off between thousands of computer-generated Morris dancers and Scottish pipers.
The real lesson of this Olympics is not to take the myth of the Olympian aura too seriously. Among all the rituals of the modern Olympic movement, the most baffling is the declaration that the Olympics bring some benefit to the hosts that is broad, profound and enduring. The Beijing games were supposed to assist China's economic, environmental or political development. There is little sign of that. The economy needed no help, the environment will not be improved by the emergency shut-down of factories for the duration of the games, and there is no sign of progress on transparency or human rights.
The International Olympic Committee overpromised and failed to hold the Chinese authorities to account. Under self-imposed pressure to make the games run smoothly, Beijing left nothing to chance. The spotlights of the world's cameras often threw its authoritarianism into sharp relief.
The London Olympics come packaged with their own myth: that they will regenerate east London and, if not set the nation jogging, inspire it to more active lifestyles. Both aims are worthy, and both are not beyond reach - but the Olympics themselves will not suffice.
The bigger prize is to revive east London's fortunes. A three-week festival of sport, even of Olympian proportions, will do nothing to help. East London needs better transport links, for which the Olympics are a convenient excuse - although it is depressing to think that the Olympic bid was necessary to rejuvenate plans for Crossrail, and more so to reflect that the east-west rail link is still years away.
Yet east London also needs better schools; the current crop scare off some of the young, ambitious families that the area needs, while those who choose to stay deserve better. Tony Blair's academies have been a modest step in the right direction, if one that Gordon Brown and Ed Balls are trying to reverse.
The singular virtue of the games as a catalyst for regeneration is that they concentrate resources and bureaucratic attention on east London. Those resources, and that attention, are overdue. But they do not guarantee success.
Lord Coe, chairman of the London 2012 organising committee, is on firmer ground in promising that the Olympics will inspire the nation. Naturally, it would help if the Olympics did not cannibalise too much of the lottery funding for grass-roots sport. But on the basic point, Lord Coe is quite right.
And as the past three weeks have reminded us, the greatest inspiration comes from letting the acts of sporting heroics speak for themselves.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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