On Friday night, Usain Bolt, arguably the biggest star in sport, will thunder down the track where he won three gold medals 12 months ago, amid the head-spinning swirl of London's giddy and glorious Games. On Saturday, it will be the turn of Jessica Ennis-Hill and Mo Farah to return to the spine-tingling scene of their Super Saturday triumphs as the 60,000 people watching try and recapture some of that Olympic magic.
But beyond the confines of a stadium that now has a secure future as a home for West Ham and athletics, albeit at a cost of at least £600m to the taxpayer, the Olympic Park remains in a state of flux. And like the dusty expanses that once played host to a sporting wonderland and will soon become houses and parkland, the wider legacy promises – layer upon layer of them, like tiers of a wedding cake, to justify the Games' £8.7bn cost – are a work in progress. The L-word came to mean so many things to so many people that trying to determine its success can be like searching for the end of the rainbow.
As Farah, Ennis-Hill et al take to the track again, it is a reminder that it is both the physical regeneration of this once-scarred patch of east London, pump-primed with billions of pounds of public money, and the legacy of Britain's elite sporting infrastructure that appear most secure one year on.
Even before the curtain had come down on the Olympics, the government had promised to boost its investment in the next Olympic cycle by 11%, to £355m, to ensure our transformation from plucky losers to driven winners was sustained.
The revolution in British sport – which began when National Lottery funding began to pour into the system – was honed by brilliant minds to combine with another huge boost in funding in 2005, and delivered an avalanche of medals in 2008 and 2012.
Some of the smaller sports that enjoyed a moment in the sun in London have struggled since – victims of UK Sport's ruthless "no compromise" policy and a lack of commercial interest now that the bandwagon has moved on. But the principle of pouring large amounts of exchequer and lottery money into elite sport has retained broad public support.
Liz Nicholl, the chief executive of UK Sport, which decides how that £355m should be divvied up, is clear that there is no turning back. She has promised to deliver more medals in more sports in Rio in three years' time.
"During the Games, it was a unique opportunity for the whole nation to see elite sport, to value it, to be proud of it, to feel it, to experience it and be inspired by it. And our politicians were there, and they saw it and they felt it. They saw the nation was proud, and that a proud nation is a happy nation," she says.
Elsewhere, legacy remains in the eye of the beholder. Look left as you come out of a spruced-up Stratford tube station and you'll see that towering temple to consumerism, the Westfield shopping centre, which acts as the gateway to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, attracting more than 700,000 visitors a week and employing thousands of locals.
Turn right, however, and walk through the indoor market stalls and discount shops of the Stratford Centre and on into Plaistow, and you'll still find plenty of locals wondering what the Olympics have done for them.
But there are others who, while reserving judgment on the Park, concede that the Olympics have, at the very least, put their postcode on the map. It suddenly feels like part of London rather than an afterthought, and many of the 11 million people who streamed into the Park last summer have already returned – whether to shop at Westfield or watch Bruce Springsteen.
The lofty, endlessly stated aim of politicians was to use the Games as the catalyst for social change, to bring east London closer to the west in terms of prosperity, and change the much-quoted statistic that you lose a year in life expectancy for every station you pass eastwards on the Jubilee line between Westminster and Canning Town.
London's mayor, Boris Johnson, was on typically ebullient form this week as he delivered a series of set pieces bashing the "Olympo-sceptics" and, inevitably for a man drawn to the big idea like a moth to a flame, unveiling a new scheme for Europe's largest indoor ski centre next to the Park.
"The Olympics have helped trigger a regeneration in east London that has been accelerated by about 70 years," he said, pointing not only to Westfield but to the new iCity development that houses BT Sport's new studios and a planned "tech hub". "There's a secondary impact and I really believe it. There is no doubt in my mind that there has been an absolute fascination among international investors around London and east London. The idea that London was open and accessible and a great place to invest has caught on internationally."
Paul Deighton, the man who brilliantly marshalled Locog (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) to deliver the Games and then took up a role as commercial secretary to the Treasury, in order to try to bring some of that stardust to large-scale infrastructure projects like HS2, is similarly enthusiastic. He says that a sceptically received UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) prediction that the Olympics would translate into £40bn in extra inward investment by the end of the decade was in fact a woeful underestimate.
The Westfield shopping centre near the Olympic site in Stratford, east London, has given the area a boost, but not everyone locally has felt the benefits of the Games. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP This is where the legacy again becomes open to interpretation. Westfield would have happened without the Games (albeit more slowly), and while Johnson says the Chinese investment in Royal Albert Dock was a direct result of the Olympics, others say it was nothing to do with it. Newham says 5,000 residents were helped into Games-time jobs, but most of those were temporary.
Either way, there can be little doubt that the Games have helped transform perceptions of a small corner of the East End. More uncertain is what sort of place the Olympic Park and its surrounds will become. Executives of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) insist that it won't become an island of prosperity amid poverty, like Canary Wharf.
"This isn't going to be a gated community. In terms of the housing we're building, a large component is social housing with a rented element as well. It's always been our aim to create a mixed community on the Park that matches the diversity of the local area," insists the LLDC chief executive, Dennis Hone, as he walks around the track in the stadium.
But Newham's chief executive, Kim Bromley-Derry, is just as quick to point out that it must also raise aspiration and provide employment where its residents can work as well as live. That is the balancing act this surprisingly cluttered and compact urban park must perform.
But it is the claim that hosting the biggest sporting event in the world would inspire a nation to become fitter and healthier that remains most open to challenge. Here again, it can be hard to separate the rhetoric from the reality.
Wander around Charlton Park and the adjoining Hornfair Park on a summer's evening and you'll see young people splashing around in the newly refurbished 50-metre lido, brand new tennis courts full to bursting, teenagers tearing around a new BMX track, the "Adizone" outdoor gym in regular use, and a queue for the outdoor table tennis table. All are directly or indirectly linked to "legacy" projects.
In Greenwich, one of the five Olympic boroughs, it feels as close as we may ever get in grimy south-east London to the continental idyll of community sports facilities in every town or suburb, offering cheap, easy access to exercise to all who want it.
Yet, up and down the country, other local authorities are being forced to slash their sport and recreation budgets by up to 40%, putting facilities, coaching programmes and maintenance budgets under grave threat. Some, such as the closure of the Don Valley stadium in Sheffield, where Ennis-Hill trains, and of Newcastle's City pool, have been high profile. Others, such as a battle to maintain football pitches on Hackney Marshes in east London, less so.
While grassroots sport quango Sport England has seen its annual investment of £300m go up as a result of coalition changes to the distribution of lottery income – a large chunk of which is channelled through sports governing bodies and targeted at 16- to 25-year-olds – it is just one part of a much wider picture.
The official figures measuring sports participation are disappointing, though the former London 2012 chairman Lord Coe is right to plead for time. The latest numbers show that, of 29 sports that recorded a change in once-a-week participation figures, 20 suffered a decline.
And while 15.4 million people played sport at least once a week in April 2012, a year later that figure has declined to 15.3 million. The government prefers instead to focus on the fact that 1.4 million more people are playing sport once a week than they were when the bid was won in 2005.
An earlier promise to increase the number of people playing sport three times or more a week by one million, and a parallel promise by the NHS to increase the number of people taking exercise by the same number, were quietly dropped before the Olympics when it became clear they wouldn't be met.
Fans cheering on Jessica Ennis at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield last summer. Don Valley is to be closed in September. Photograph: Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns/Getty A new BBC poll showing that only one in 10 people played more sport as a result of the Games, but that seven in 10 thought it was value for money, shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Beyond the rhetoric, the link remained tenuous at best.
In some ways, elite athletes are the very worst people to ask whether inspiration can beget participation. They can all trace the spark of their sporting career back to a moment of inspiration, without realising that they are exceptional rather than typical.
But as far as the younger generation is concerned, those who were cynical about the link between watching feats of remarkable sporting achievement and increased enthusiasm for playing it were forced to eat their words last summer – up to a point.
Anyone who witnessed the surge of enthusiasm in schools across the country, and at the Olympic Park in particular, would have had to work hard to hang on to their cynicism.
But evidence in the wake of the Games showed a disappointing number ended up on waiting lists at the local athletics club or searching in vain for a gymnastics club that wasn't oversubscribed. Meanwhile, school sport remains in flux.
"For me, the biggest disappointment is still school sport. I think we have gone backwards. I can't say anything else and be honest," says Olympic gold medallist and Locog board member Jonathan Edwards. "The primary school money is there, but there is no network and, anecdotally, some of the stories about how that money is being spent aren't brilliant. They might have had their faults, but school sports partnerships were essentially doing a good job. To dismantle that and start again from scratch – it's madness."
And given that the central pledge of the Games was to "inspire a generation", it seems bizarre that there is no way of actually measuring how many kids are playing sport. The coalition scrapped Labour's national school sport survey, saying it was overly bureaucratic, while Sport England currently only measures adults and relies on landline telephone surveys.
An education select committee report published last week welcomed the £150m investment in primary schools announced in March, which replaces the £162m school sport partnerships that were axed in December 2010, but said it was far from enough on its own.
It said that without extending the two-year commitment to invest £150m annually in primary school sport it risked being seen as little more than a "gimmick", and said schools needed more support in how it was spent.
A commitment to training more specialist PE teachers and to raising awareness among primary-age teachers of the importance of sport are to be welcomed, but there remains a lack of joined-up thinking.
And too much time is still spent on the redundant exercise of championing competitive sport over some non-existent "prizes for all culture" when the emphasis should be on getting kids to exercise, whether that means hula-hoops or hockey sticks.
Speak to those involved in the original bid, from Tony Blair down, and they will claim that a key plank of their mission was to shift the centre of gravity so that sport would come to be seen as an integral part of education, health and social policy. With the NHS and education policy in a state of permanent revolution, it is little surprise that embedding sport and exercise are not at the top of their priority list.
Coe is right to point out that the fact that these questions are on the agenda at all is a victory of sorts. Others, such as former Locog deputy chairman Sir Keith Mills, who has taken matters into his own hands with his Sported foundation, believe there is an awfully long way to go.
During the seven-year run-up to the Games, it was as though the government was so taken with Coe's legacy pitch that it couldn't resist endlessly adding promise after promise to the list.
The legacy for volunteering, for one, is harder to fathom. The whole nation was caught up in a wave of enthusiasm for the 70,000 purple and red-clad Games Makers a year ago, but here, too, there is a feeling that the momentum stalled as those treasured uniforms were returned to the wardrobe as keepsakes.
There are other shifts in perception that shouldn't be underestimated. According to Sue Tibballs, chief executive of the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation and a longstanding critic of the lack of media coverage for female athletes, the Games were a watershed moment in the way female sports stars are perceived.
The Olympic Stadium being prepared for the first anniversary of the Games at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA In some sports there is a clear correlation between the investment that was guaranteed and maintained as a result of a home Games and their success in driving achievement at all levels.
British cycling has become the exemplar of how to marry elite success with long-term growth at the grassroots, creating a virtuous circle of public and corporate investment to deliver ever more ambitious goals.
Nicola Adams, the first British female boxer to win a gold medal, has almost single-handedly inspired a 79% uplift in the number of women practising her sport regularly. "A lot of girls come up to me all the time and say I've inspired them to take up boxing. It's really good to see," she says.
Yet other sports, like netball, suggest it is not major events that boost participation but well thought-out, intelligent marketing and strategies. It has targeted lapsed players and mums with clever campaigns and offerings, and been rewarded with a rise in numbers despite not being an Olympic sport. But these are the exceptions that, in too many cases, prove the rule. While there are pockets of good practice among some governing bodies and some schools, there is no overriding sense that sport is becoming more central to our way of life.
With various degrees of frustration, everyone from outgoing legacy tsar Coe to Locog deputy chairman Sir Keith Mills voices concern that the system is still far from joined-up enough.
Most obviously, the education secretary, Michael Gove, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table to put up a share of the cash for a new school sport policy to replace the one arbitrarily axed for ideological reasons in 2010. According to a survey commissioned by Asda this week, seven in 10 parents think more sport should be made available to children at primary school. "It's vital. It's the biggest thing. We talk about finding champions of the future but, to be honest, they're probably always going to find themselves," says runner Paula Radcliffe, gazing at the finishing line as thousands stream across it having completed a National Lottery fun run around the Olympic Park. "I don't think people realise that kids perform better at school, they're happier, and the economy is stronger if everyone does sport. It's making sure there is time allocated in schools, and that they have strong links with clubs. For me, as a parent, if you're told this is the first generation that is going to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, then that is scary."
This is the somewhat humdrum reality of turning all that glittered last summer into lasting gold. While everyone lauds the cross-party consensus that delivered the Games, the legacy debate has descended into political point-scoring. The shadow culture secretary, Harriet Harman, went on the attack on Friday, accusing the government of "squandering the Olympic legacy" and wasting a "once in a lifetime opportunity".
Yet, even if all that the London Games did was give the country a shot in the arm and provide a stage for a magical six weeks of sporting action, many would argue it was still worth it. Jordan Duckitt, one of the seven teenagers who lit the flame at the climax of Danny Boyle's remarkable opening ceremony, says legacy "isn't a thing but a feeling".
Christine Ohuruogu, the London silver medallist who grew up a stone's throw from the Olympic Park, says the Games delivered an unquantifiable dividend that can't just be measured in pounds and pence. Which is why, despite continuing economic uncertainty and widespread social unrest, Tokyo, Istanbul and Madrid are desperately vying to host the 2020 Games.
"Some things can't be measured. General wellbeing, feeling better – you can't disregard that impact. Once you aim higher, you have more opportunity. You won't always measure it in monetary value, but I think in emotional, spiritual terms, people feel a lot better about themselves," says Ohuruogu.
A YouGov poll published on Friday revealed that 75% of Britons believed London was right to have bid to host the Games, up from the 44% who were in favour of the Games in a poll conducted a year before the Olympics.
Whether that is enough for the electorate – who this weekend will bathe in the warm glow of memories of a sporting summer like no other – remains the £8.7bn question.
"This, for me, is not about a six-week dip in an active people survey. There are serious problems. The average kid in the UK is now 50% less active at the age of 15 than at the age of nine. That is unsustainable," says Coe. But without a serious, long-term, cross-party plan to equal that which delivered perhaps the best Olympic Games of modern times, one of its defining legacies could yet be a fatter, rather than a fitter, nation.
Actually I'm not commenting as 500 million idiots have done it already.
- Kent apple , Tonbridge Kent, 23/7/2013 02:51
Report abuse