Olympics: Opposing forces are facing in the same direction for a change - Telegraph
Olympics: Opposing forces are facing in the same direction for a change
It was like waking up in a foreign country. All of a sudden a nation of sneering cynics has been revamped as a bunch of raving enthusiasts for an event that will cost them all money. Has there ever been such role reversal? London has launched its bid to host the 2012 Olympics and, before our very eyes, as though touched by a fairy godmother's wand, the antis were miraculously transmogrified into pros.
It is positively biblical. The Prime Minister will lie down with the Chancellor, not to mention the London Mayor he previously expunged from his party. The Daily Mirror - What About The Hospitals? - is yelling, volte face: "Bring On The Games!"
Only resolute carpers like MP Gerald Kaufman, who presided over the parliamentary committee to investigate the wisdom of the bid (he said no, they said yes), have been able to cling on to their sense of doom. The rest - all for it! Always have been! The great steaming fibbers that they are.
The Prime Minister has decided and now almost everyone is packed on the bandwagon like shrieking sardines. But that is the way of the world, certainly the way of democratic political preferment and we shouldn't be at all surprised. Instead, we should rejoice that opposing forces (Tory and Labour, men and women, North and South, sport and commerce, everyone else and Linford Christie) are facing in the same direction for a change and use the intoxicatingly rare occasion to get the job done.
What happens next is crucial. The bid process will take two years. Yes, we need the right leader (a sort of Winston Churchill meets Princess Diana and Richard Branson, if current thinking is right). We need absolute governmental support, we need minute analysis, technical know-how and nailed-down promises. (We could also do with the 15.45 from Nuneaton getting into London somewhere in the vicinity of its time-tabled arrival time, but let us not get hysterical with hope.)
Even by current standards this was a strange reply by Kaufman
London bid another step forward
What we need above all is commitment. To signal such a thing to the trained binoculars of the International Olympic Committee is a delicate matter. They will be used to promises, not to mention the flouting of them. It is crucial that the UK rolls up its sporting sleeves now and builds something tangible. Not in two years' time. Not sneakily waiting to see whether we are the winners of the bidding war, but now.
Swimming, for instance, reckons it needs at least four 50-metre swimming pools in London. It has two at the moment. Crystal Palace, which is a pit, and Ealing, which is too narrow. Paris, by the way, in the same 12-mile radius of the city centre, has 20 50m pools, a little factual nugget that President Chirac may be devious enough to mention when he promotes the joys of the French capital as Olympic host in 2012.
"We need to get these projects under way," said David Sparkes, the chief executive of the Amateur Swimming Association, yesterday. "We need to see what the Prime Minister's made of. If we don't there's a danger we won't look committed."
You could argue he would have to say that. It is not his £30 million (plus) per pool being spent, it is ours. But he is only speaking the common-sense truth. If we want these Olympic Games in nine years' time, we ought to behave as though we want them. Not with misty-eyed words but rock-solid deeds. To be seen to be providing the facilities that have been so horrendously and shamefully neglected for donkeys' years would begin to redress an overdue balance.
Then the IOC would know we mean it. And so would the children, those poor, fat, under-active, junk-guzzling children we are always using in the hype but for whom we never actually provide anything remotely resembling a playing field. It ought to be Tony Blair's mission in life, concerning the Olympics, to horrify and annoy Gerald Kaufman in equal measure every day for the next two years.
And so, everything is all right again. Dr Ekkart Arbeit, Denise Lewis's coach, has come out and admitted that, yes, he did "support" the performance-enhancing drug abuse of the former East German state. But he is sorry. He adds: "I make no excuses for what I did as a coach for the GDR team but I hope that I can be judged by my actions today and not those of over a decade ago."
Marvellous. Just what the doctor ordered. We can forget the outrage and get on with life in the comfortable knowledge that we are a forgiving, tolerant sporting community that allows one of the principal schemers of systematic human experimentation to live in our midst as a welcome guest.
Alternatively, it is sickening and our sporting governors are no less than cowards. No one is saying a truly contrite man should not be spiritually shriven. But should athletics have him back? This is the sport he fundamentally cheated and perverted for 20 years. We have his word for it in 840 pages of secret police files. He defiled the sport that now seeks, mysteriously, to protect him.
Presumably, if Lewis wins gold at the World Championships this year and/or at the Athens Olympics a year later, Dr Arbeit - who plays a "crucial" role in her coaching, as she expressed it last week - will be in line for the honours. How will British athletics feel to crown such a man with laurels? And how much celebration will there be among the former athletes of the GDR, physically and psychologically maimed by the grisly pharmaceutical enhancement Dr Arbeit so zealously "supported". It may be "over a decade ago" for Dr Arbeit; for those athletes it has been a life sentence.
Olympics: Opposing forces are facing in the same direction for a change - Telegraph
Olympics: Opposing forces are facing in the same direction for a change
It was like waking up in a foreign country. All of a sudden a nation of sneering cynics has been revamped as a bunch of raving enthusiasts for an event that will cost them all money. Has there ever been such role reversal? London has launched its bid to host the 2012 Olympics and, before our very eyes, as though touched by a fairy godmother's wand, the antis were miraculously transmogrified into pros.
It is positively biblical. The Prime Minister will lie down with the Chancellor, not to mention the London Mayor he previously expunged from his party. The Daily Mirror - What About The Hospitals? - is yelling, volte face: "Bring On The Games!"
Only resolute carpers like MP Gerald Kaufman, who presided over the parliamentary committee to investigate the wisdom of the bid (he said no, they said yes), have been able to cling on to their sense of doom. The rest - all for it! Always have been! The great steaming fibbers that they are.
The Prime Minister has decided and now almost everyone is packed on the bandwagon like shrieking sardines. But that is the way of the world, certainly the way of democratic political preferment and we shouldn't be at all surprised. Instead, we should rejoice that opposing forces (Tory and Labour, men and women, North and South, sport and commerce, everyone else and Linford Christie) are facing in the same direction for a change and use the intoxicatingly rare occasion to get the job done.
What happens next is crucial. The bid process will take two years. Yes, we need the right leader (a sort of Winston Churchill meets Princess Diana and Richard Branson, if current thinking is right). We need absolute governmental support, we need minute analysis, technical know-how and nailed-down promises. (We could also do with the 15.45 from Nuneaton getting into London somewhere in the vicinity of its time-tabled arrival time, but let us not get hysterical with hope.)
Even by current standards this was a strange reply by Kaufman
London bid another step forward
What we need above all is commitment. To signal such a thing to the trained binoculars of the International Olympic Committee is a delicate matter. They will be used to promises, not to mention the flouting of them. It is crucial that the UK rolls up its sporting sleeves now and builds something tangible. Not in two years' time. Not sneakily waiting to see whether we are the winners of the bidding war, but now.
Swimming, for instance, reckons it needs at least four 50-metre swimming pools in London. It has two at the moment. Crystal Palace, which is a pit, and Ealing, which is too narrow. Paris, by the way, in the same 12-mile radius of the city centre, has 20 50m pools, a little factual nugge
t that President Chirac may be devious enough to mention when he promotes the joys of the French capital as Olympic host in 2012.
"We need to get these projects under way," said David Sparkes, the chief executive of the Amateur Swimming Association, yesterday. "We need to see what the Prime Minister's made of. If we don't there's a danger we won't look committed."
You could argue he would have to say that. It is not his £30 million (plus) per pool being spent, it is ours. But he is only speaking the common-sense truth. If we want these Olympic Games in nine years' time, we ought to behave as though we want them. Not with misty-eyed words but rock-solid deeds. To be seen to be providing the facilities that have been so horrendously and shamefully neglected for donkeys' years would begin to redress an overdue balance.
Then the IOC would know we mean it. And so would the children, those poor, fat, under-active, junk-guzzling children we are always using in the hype but for whom we never actually provide anything remotely resembling a playing field. It ought to be Tony Blair's mission in life, concerning the Olympics, to horrify and annoy Gerald Kaufman in equal measure every day for the next two years.
And so, everything is all right again. Dr Ekkart Arbeit, Denise Lewis's coach, has come out and admitted that, yes, he did "support" the performance-enhancing drug abuse of the former East German state. But he is sorry. He adds: "I make no excuses for what I did as a coach for the GDR team but I hope that I can be judged by my actions today and not those of over a decade ago."
Marvellous. Just what the doctor ordered. We can forget the outrage and get on with life in the comfortable knowledge that we are a forgiving, tolerant sporting community that allows one of the principal schemers of systematic human experimentation to live in our midst as a welcome guest.
Alternatively, it is sickening and our sporting governors are no less than cowards. No one is saying a truly contrite man should not be spiritually shriven. But should athletics have him back? This is the sport he fundamentally cheated and perverted for 20 years. We have his word for it in 840 pages of secret police files. He defiled the sport that now seeks, mysteriously, to protect him.
Presumably, if Lewis wins gold at the World Championships this year and/or at the Athens Olympics a year later, Dr Arbeit - who plays a "crucial" role in her coaching, as she expressed it last week - will be in line for the honours. How will British athletics feel to crown such a man with laurels? And how much celebration will there be among the former athletes of the GDR, physically and psychologically maimed by the grisly pharmaceutical enhancement Dr Arbeit so zealously "supported". It may be "over a decade ago" for Dr Arbeit; for those athletes it has been a life sentence.