2012 VISION

Winning the Olympic bid was one of the great moments of recent years. I was with the British and Irish Lions in New Zealand and because of the time difference, I was in bed, but made sure to watch the announcement. Although I knew we had the best bid technically, and although I knew everyone had worked so hard, it was a moment of genuine surprise when Jacques Rogge finally opened the envelope and said London. I jumped up out of bed and was charging around like a madman, then got dressed and went down to celebrate with some of the people who'd stayed up to watch it in the hotel bar.

Of course the bombs the next day brought everyone back to earth, but even with that, there was such overwhelming public support for the bid and I think that helped win it too.

I visited Athens in 2004 and saw what a celebration the Olympic Games are. The coming together of many different countries and cultures in the name of sport is what the Olympic spirit can achieve. Hopefully Britain can use the Games in 2012 to become one of the best sporting nations on the world, which we are already so close to being. We have one of the best football leagues, yet our international team doesn’t always beat the rest of the world. We won the cricket Ashes last summer, then struggled against Sri Lanka. And Kelly Holmes stole the show in the athletics stadium with her 2 gold medals at Athens, but we didn’t do amazingly well elsewhere.

2012 can help change attitudes towards sport in the UK, and it should also give us a chance to win medals, but the infrastructure needs to be in place to allow our talented athletes to get there. The necessary infrastructure is massive, both for the staging of the Games and support for our athletes, and that needs to be done properly. The Government’s support is crucial, and they have already been strong supporters of the bid process and developments since last July, but the Government must let the relevant agencies get on with what they are good at, without making this a Government run project.

Governments are clearly important in the Olympic process, both to winning the bid and staging the Games. But it also requires real commitment and vision from others. I thought Seb Coe did a great job. He is one of my all time favourite sportsmen anyway, but what he showed again in the bid process is that it is not just about talent, it is about hard work too. There is a lot of hard work to be done between now and 2012 but we can be confident it will be done. I still think Britain should be a bigger sporting nation than we are, and these Games are a massive opportunity for us.

By Alastair Campbell

03.04.07

Photography © Getty Images