# 'Are You Pulling my Legacy?'



## granty1

For  those of you that care, London has been awarded the 2017 World  Athletics Championships. I say it like that because I expect that not  many people do. Not that much anyway. Certainly it pales into sporting  insignificance when compared to the glimmering spectacle of the Olympic  games to be held here next year, and for many, constitutes a far duller  prospect. It’s a bit like being out in a bar: you get chatting to a  confident and gorgeous girl/guy, and bask in their glorious presence for  a short while as they pay you the attention you’ve worked so hard to  receive.  Before you know it, he or she leaves and you’re left talking  to their awkward, shy and ugly cousin, and despite doing their level  best to impress you, you would much rather they just went away forever. 

 
 That’s what we’re dealing with here, and I’ll tell you why. It’s  because most people don’t see athletics as a sport. Simple. It’s a  spectacle: a once-in-four-years reason to care a jot about a bunch of  men and women running around a field and throwing things. If I ever tune  in to such events, it is because of the outside chance of a javelin  missing its target and nestling itself in the shoulder of a middle  distance runner. It hasn’t happened yet. 

I’m  being slightly unfair – some people love running, jumping and throwing.  So much so, they do and talk about little else. You know the people I’m  referring to, and they’ve almost certainly bumped into you when you’ve  been strolling romantically along the South Bank, or jogged absurdly on  the spot next to you in yellow leggings while you’re waiting to cross  the road. Fitness is important, I grant it, but that’s what gyms are  for. Runners and jumpers are thus safely contained and shielded from the  army of non runners and jumpers who try really hard on a daily basis to  fight the overwhelming urge to trip them up or clothesline them as they  bounce annoyingly past.  

 
 But I digress. The point is, athletics for most people is a spectacle,  and not a sport. We all love the 100 metre final at the Olympics.  Thousands of years of Darwinian achievement sandwiched into less than  ten glorious seconds worth of explosive muscular contraction. Likewise,  we all know Usain Bolt, and Asafa Powell, and, erm, the other ones.  Similarly, the 200 metres are popular. And the 400, a little bit. The  800 metres is bearable, but anything longer than that and we’ll  generally wait half and hour to rewind the Sky box for the last lap.  That’s the sort of dedication the British public has for track and field  athletics. Thus, the World Championships constitute a watered-down  version of this already diluted enthusiasm, and I will bet a discus  throw of small change that the newly preserved running track around the  national stadium will put fewer bums on seats than during its glory days  in 2012, with the footfall of Olympic champions still echoing around  its capacious, spectral shell. Don ’t believe me? Just look at the  Crystal Palace complex during one of the absurdly titled ‘grand prixs’  next time it’s on TV. Ghostly.


But the point of securing the games was to ensure that the stadium  didn’t turn into an athletic burial ground like Barcelona’s, right? Well  yes, ostensibly. Coe and co will regurgitate the same platitudinous  rhetoric of the ‘legacy’ and ‘sustainability’ of track and field  athletics in this high-achieving land. But in reality, it’s analogous to  a hungover fry-up in a greasy spoon café. Winning the World  Championships saved their bacon. Just think, if London had lost out to  Doha, then the egg deposited on faces would be runny and plentiful, just  like after the failed World Cup bid, except with a half-billion pound  stale piece of ovular fried bread as the centre-piece of the oily, tepid  platter. By securing the championships in 2017, the legacy committee  has managed to justify retaining the stadium in public ownership; an 11th  hour decision that saw West Ham lose out on its (previously ratified)  bid for a new home. Without 2017, the farcical organisation of the  stadium’s fate would have stood out like a world-class velodrome in  Stratford. Which is another issue, for another time. 
 
Cynical perhaps, but Coe got lucky here. Surely the concept of a legacy  is predicated on deciding it beforehand? Otherwise it’s just chaotic  bureaucracy buried in a happy accident. The Olympic organising committee  has got so much right in the build up to the games that it magnifies  the confusion surrounding the stadium ten-fold. The saving grace of it  all is that the centrepiece of 2012 _will _be  ready on time, a tremendous feat considering London’s recent efforts at  building completion. It’s taken, for instance, nearly ten years to  install the new escalators at Bank station, and as we all remember,  Wembley was late (an eventuality that won some of its builders  considerable sums of money at Ladbrokes).      

And  so, Qatar defeated, we jog inexorably on to the games next year.  Excited? I am actually, and my ticket lottery win for the synchronised  swimming will be put to good use. As for 2017, I would tell you here how  to get your hands on tickets, but you’re not going to bother, right?


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## Bloggsworth

So you were a failure as an athlete then...


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## Kevin

Tho' Diana forsake thee,

Silenus take cheer,

Aye! ..so fair doth Fergi now appear...


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## Divus

Grant
You have forgotten to mention that most of the British population will watch, if they watch at all, the games on TV.     Let us ignore for the moment the cost of a ticket and the fact that you really did not get the ticket you wanted, think about how you are actually going to travel to the stadium.    The public transport system of East London is going to grind to a halt.    And where exactly is the visitor going to stay? - because for sure if you are more than 100 miles from the stadium, you won't be able to get to London, travel to the stadium, view the allocated spectacle and travel back home in a day.

No, the games in London was a political issue - Mr Blair yet again skilfully managed to work the oracle for some unseen advantage.

If the games had been staged in the Birmingham or Manchester region, then I can see how it would have benefited the local population.
But for the residents of the  East End of London it is going to be a nightmare period when life as it is normally lived is going to grind to a ghastly halt.

London is full up already - during the period when the games are in play - the population is going to spill over, just like the froth on a glass of Guinness.


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