Two years, 1 day and counting.....

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is July 27th, and that will be exactly two years from the start of the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The five years that have passed since the announcement that the games would be coming to London have flown by, and I have no doubt that the next two years will pass by even quicker.

We were talking about this last week to some friends, and one was saying how much she is dreading it. She is not a sports lover, but it isn’t the wall to wall sports coverage that she fears, nor is it the influx of all the teams, athletes and spectators into our already over-crowded little island, or even the mass of Olympic merchandise that you know will flood every shop in the country. No, what she is apprehensive about is the impression of our country that will be given at the Opening Ceremony! This is not a view that she holds alone, I have to say. If you were unlucky enough to have caught the brief London 2012 section of the Closing Ceremony in Beijing then you will be aware of how badly wrong something like that can go!! And it is quite a widely held feeling that this will only be magnified when it comes to the Opening Ceremony in two years time.

Of course, it is part of the British psyche to put ourselves down – we are World Class at it! LOL Hold on, was that me boasting the Brits are good at something?? No, couldn’t have been! :-) Anyway, Dori tells me from her own experience, that it was the same with Atlanta before the 1996 games, but that it all turned out great in the end. The London 2012 organizing committee have appointed Danny Boyle, who directed Slumdog Millionaire amongst other films, as the director of the opening ceremony, which does gives some cause for optimism. I am sure (ish!) that it will be “alright on the night”!

But, whatever happens at the opening ceremony, I am sure the Games themselves will be a great success, and that is what is important at the end of the day. I am very excitedly looking forward to what will be the biggest sporting occasion this country has witnessed in my lifetime. And with the English FA also bidding to host the World Cup in 2018 (decision to be announced in December) it could be quite a sporting decade for England! Two years, 1 day and counting.....

Three Years and Counting

Three years from today will see the start of the London Olympics. The opening ceremony will take place on the evening of Friday July 27th 2012. I, for one, just hope that it will be a little bit better staged than the fiasco that was the handover section of the closing ceremony at last year’s Beijing Olympics. After the spectacular displays put on by the Chinese, it was an embarrassment to see the complete debacle of the London section of the ceremony!

But now is not the time to look back at past ignominy but forward to future successes. The British team had their most successful Olympics for 100 years in Beijing and with the next Olympiad being held in this country, hopes are high that the British team can do even better next time. There hasn’t been an Olympics or a World Cup held in this country during my lifetime, so I am very excited at the prospect of seeing the world’s sporting stars performing on these shores. Dori and I are hoping to get some tickets to see at least one of the events that will take place between July 27th and 12th August 2012.

Only three more years to wait!