Imagine

I can't begin to imagine what the world's athletes must be feeling now.  How do you deal with the morning after four years' work?  A lifetime's dreaming?  I've just been a spectator and I'm struggling to fill the Olympics-shaped gap.  I've been watching montages and reading articles all morning.  This is the sports fan equivalent of re-reading old love letters the morning after a break-up.  Soon I worry I'll graduate to Facebook stalking the IOC to see how it's getting on with its new city, Rio.  She's got better legs but will she make them laugh?

On July 18th, 2002 I read an article on the front page of the Telegraph's sport pullout with the headline 'London Must Bid'.  David Welch, the then sports editor of the paper, made the case that London would never have a better chance of hosting the Olympic Games than in 2012.  Welch's prediction looks reasonable ten years on, with the next games in Rio likely to be followed by visits to Japan and the USA.  I don't believe Europe will see another Summer Olympics before 2028.

"...it is not just about the regeneration of East London, laudable though that is. Nor just about the projected financial benefits that might accrue from investment and tourism. Nor the potential feel-good factor. It is also about sport... Why? Because sport matters in people's lives. Much more than some like to accept."

Welch sadly died last year, just missing the glorious festival of sport which through his paper's sustained campaign he did more than most to bring about.  I remember reading those lines of his as if it were five minutes ago, however.  From that moment on, for a decade, I have been imagining what these two weeks could be like.  The odds were long and lengthening before Seb Coe took over the failing bid.  Then, on July 6th 2005, I got to watch IOC President Jacques Rogge open an envelope and announce that I could start imagining what they would be like.

I spent that day sitting in Trafalgar Square imagining.  I remember that a TV crew from Asia pointed a camera at me and asked me whether I thought the games would be a success here.  I told them that it would because of the fanatical British love of sport.  Sport matters in people's lives.  I was confident that would be enough to overcome any obstacle.  I took home a massive plastic banner reading 'London 2012 - Candidate City', which one day I'll find a use for, I swear.

Now I don't get to imagine any more.  I suppose that's one of the reasons I feel a bit sad.  For ten years and twenty five days I've been able to imagine what all or part of a London Olympics would be like.  It's hit every one of my expectations (including being less than perfect, but honest about it).  It's not coming back now, there won't be another one in my lifetime.  I made the mistake of agreeing to be out of the country during the Paralympics.  That future tense, with its unlimited possibilities, just became memory.  But what a memory.

On the first morning of the games, I made a decision that since I was only ever going to get one Olympics in my home city, I was going to make the most of every second, and I was going to write down every memory so that I'd have something to look back on when there wasn't any more imagining to be done.  The problem was finding time to to both, to witness and record.  Trying not to view every event through a viewfinder or over the top of a laptop.

So in the past three days I've let this blog lapse, and just looked on.

I saw a handball semi final where a stadium of Norwiegans celebrated their comprehensive victory over South Korea, reminding me that for every curious Brit discovering a new sport there are a hundred dedicated followers worldwide who've been living and breathing it for decades.

Then I watched home favourite Lutalo Muhammad overcome his selection controversy to win bronze in the Taekwondo arena.  I saw a beautiful moment that didn't make the montages where a bronze medalist from Italy put his arm around his opponent from Afghanistan to help him across the mat when the Afghan literally couldn't stand the disappointment.

Yesterday I watched the last silver medal of London 2012 won for Britain by Samantha Murray in the Modern Pentathlon, after an often surreal afternoon of horse riding, shooting and cross-country running.  I saw a Mexican woman jump a fence while hanging underneath her horse, an overenthusiastic ride jump clean out of the arena rather than wait for their gate to be opened and an Egyptian athlete taking a baby who couldn't have been more than a few months old on her lap of honour (I've not been able to find out the baby's age, but I discovered instead that the athlete is Aya Medany, and that her father won a Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore for his work on climate change).  I'm worried that in years to come I'll be sad not to have better memories of those days, but maybe that'll leave some room for that lost imagination.

32 years after his death, John Lennon managed to steal the show at last night's closing ceremony with a song about the power of the imagination.  The BBC used it to end their coverage of the games, and if you can watch it without a lump in your throat you should check your pulse.  Perhaps my favourite response to the end of the games is a piece in the Guardian asking whether we can imagine a Britain that retains the magic of the past fortnight.  Even getting ready to move back abroad next week, I can save a little imagination for the Paralympic games, which are going to be the best attended and supported in history.

So thanks, London 2012.  Thanks for a fortnight of unmatchable memories.  Perhaps thanks even more for a decade of imagination... though I could not, ever, have imagined 29 British golds.  Or the sound 80,000 people can make when they will a man down a final straight.  Or this.

The London Olympics:  Sometimes even your imagination can't go far enough.