SIDELINE CUTAs the mind-boggling cost of London 2012 begins to hit home, the Olympics will rely on its unbeatable secret weapon – the volunteers
ARMED BOBBIES! Missile launchers on the roofs! Army boats on the Thames! Yes, the backlash against the London Olympics has begun in earnest this week as a heavy-duty military exercise seems to hint at a nightmarish August for Londoners and visitors. With Britain mired in a recession and the anticipated bill for the Olympics inevitably racing hopelessly over-budget to an estimated £13.5 billion (before the tip for the sommelier), the realisation that there is something preposterous about spending all this money and employing anti-terrorist weaponry to host a two-week athletics extravaganza is beginning to sink in. The anger and anxiety is nothing new. Many Londoners are experiencing the same pangs of pre-Olympic doubt and worry that visit all host cities. Call it Buyer’s Guilt.
Even in the decade when the western world was tipsy on the champagne of cheap credit, there was a vague recognition that the Olympic Games was in danger of becoming a bloated parody of Baron de Coubertin’s ideal. The absolute rights afforded to sponsors, the television bidding wars, the flying doves, the guff about the symbolism of the Olympic torch, the pandering of governments and host city officials to the IOC and the endless anthem playing . . . it has become dictatorial.
The last three Olympics coincided with the credit boom and a general feeling that the Games were in the right cities at the right time. Sydney 2000 was probably as close to dreamy perfection as the Olympics will ever reach. The Athens Games took place against a backdrop of muted social discontent but the selling point of the Olympics coming ‘home’ was irresistible. And four years ago, China used the Olympics to deliver the most perfectly choreographed statement of intent the world had seen since the Berlin games of 1936.
Four years ago, the New Yorker sent Anthony Lane, its resident Englishman and film critic for the magazine, off to Beijing to write a couple of lengthy letters. Like everyone in the Bird’s Nest stadium on the night of the opening ceremony, he was stunned by the visual sophistication and the sheer number of human beings behind the spectacle. But even then, his thoughts began turning to London and four years time and he wondered how Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee, must have been feeling as he watched what Lane described as “miracles of visual manipulation”, wondering how he would follow that.
“I tried to pick him out among the VIPs on that first Friday, but without success,” Lane wrote. “He may have been hiding in the men’s room, calling home to order more light bulbs. You can imagine the rising panic in his voice: ‘They had two thousand and eight drummers, all lit up. Yes, two thousand and eight. And what have we got so far? Elton John on a trampoline.’”
But even as Bush and Putin and the other world leaders permitted themselves a long, slow gulp as they sat in the stadium witnessing China’s night of manifest destiny, the idea of the Olympics returning to good old London was reassuring precisely because of it promising to be everything that Beijing was not. You can forgive Bette Midler everything simply because it was she who observed that “When it is three o’clock in New York, it’s still 1938 in London.”
Even now, you can still find that everything-in-its-own-good-time-old-boy reserve simply by walking up Bond Street. Yes, the London Olympics may not have the technical fireworks of Beijing but so what? It has Big Ben and Beckham and the Underground and the Queen and the Tower and Wills and Kate and Mick Jagger or Sir Paul could probably be called upon to deliver a song and yes, Dame Judi would wave regally and the brass band would play Chariots of Fire in Hyde Park: it would be quaint and it would be English and it would be more human in scale. The English opening ceremony would be closer to the Queen’s Jubilee than Beijing, when HRH and other Royals pleasure-boated down the Thames as her subjects waved flags from the bridges and river walks. Innocent days!
Except that now, it is all threatening to become a bit grim. How about this for advance publicity from PM Cameron in March: “There will be more police on the streets, there will be boats on the Thames, helicopters in the sky, troops will be assisting us in securing the venues; our intelligence operations will be working around the clock. This will be the biggest and most integrated security operation in mainland Britain in our peacetime history.”
That seems a bit much for what is basically a gargantuan version of school sports day – but without the three-legged-race. It certainly seems as if the Olympics would not be a good time for Richard Branson to embark on one of his daffy aviation expeditions across the city: any low-flying aircraft is liable to be shot down, if only as a last resort.
But the London Games have been followed by the dark shadow of 7/7, the July atrocities which occurred the very day after London’s bid was announced as successful. There was no way that security was not going to be high on the agenda after that. David Cameron inherited these Olympics when he took office: they were the dream works of T Blair and company. Even so, things are bad when he has to suggest that people should ignore the guns and just enjoy the fun and games.
“Let me be absolutely clear I’m determined that this will be a sporting event with a really serious security operation rather than a security operation with a really serious sporting event,” the PM went on to assure the nation. Hmmmh. The very fact that he had to make the distinction is an acknowledgement that the two could easily become blurred. Is that an archer on the roof Dad? No, son, it’s a sniper. It will be lost on nobody that the streets of London could have done with heavier policing during the riots last August. And the general discontent that fanned the flames of those riots has hardly gone away.
The Olympics reeks of corporate money, from the single laneway reserved so the nabobs don’t have to suffer the traffic congestion to the fleets of expensive cars and the impenetrably tough security. It reeks of exclusivity and of a many-tiered society and of a world to which only the most perfumed and privileged gain access. Everything about the Olympics show will represent a stinging slap in the face for protest groups demanding a more equal society. The Olympics literally takes possession of its host city for the duration of the games in a way that all Londoners, from the Sloane Square set to the Hasidic Jewish enclave of Stamford Hill are going to find bewildering.
But the big question is this: will the London Olympics be any good?
And this is the thing. There are 83 days “to go”. Most of those will be filled with a chorus line of cheerleaders for the games on one side and conscientious objectors on the other. The din will become deafening as the days tick down. Then, finally, comes the opening ceremony, usually breathtaking and always daft and then the actual sport begins.
And always, the games are choc-a-bloc with human drama. And always, the city involved kind of falls into the Olympic rhythm . . .the city will come to a standstill for the 400m relay swim final, the 100m dash, the basketball final and so on. And always, always, the Olympics has its unbeatable secret weapon – the volunteers: the thousands of people who give their time and keep on smiling and perform their duties with such sincerity they can make even the biggest Olympic curmudgeon feel there is hope for society.
The suave international set who are the IOC know this. They know that they can rely on the goodwill of thousands to generate a really magical sense of people-looking-out-for- one-another, a feeling that is alien to any big city. It is a temporary state, of course, but that doesn’t matter. It lasts two weeks and then the Olympics leaves town and good old London can go back to 1938 – albeit with a 21st century debt to pay.
