London 2012 Olympics - Part II

Wow. The London 2012 Olympic games are a triumph. At the time of writing (Sunday morning, 12th August) Team GB have won 62 medals (including 28 golds) with more to come today as the competition draws to a close, making it our most successful games since 1908 (when we had an embarrassingly large medal haul). 

For a small country on the edge of Europe, finishing third in the medal table behind America and China is something of an achievement and one in which the whole country can take pride. Our elite athletes, the coaches and their support teams, the products of a sporting system that has been utterly transformed over recent years, have exceeded both their own targets and our expectations, burying the rampant pre-games cynicism in a shower of medals.

So what's next? After the final day of competition and the closing ceremony (a great excuse for a party) this evening comes the Paralympic Games, starting 29th August. It may not receive the TV and Internet coverage of the main Games but the Paralympics should still provide an extraordinary  sporting spectacle. Our athletes deserve the same level of the support seen in the main games and hopefully they'll be able to enjoy a similar level of success.

After that we have the long buildup to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where, I suspect, Team GB will try to better their 2012 haul. Their ability to do this is directly related to the funding the team receives, so David Cameron's announcement that the Government's funding of UK sport will continue until at least 2016 (albeit at the current level - inflation will force the organising bodies to make some tough decisions over the next few years if they can't make up the difference with lottery funds or private sponsorship) is very welcome. 

And what of the cost of the 2012 games? Hosting the games cost an estimated £9bn, which isn't a small amount of money for a country stuck in recession. As a showcase for Britain, and especially for London, the games have been fantastic. The volunteers, resplendent in their pink and purple outfits, did a great job and provided an uncharacteristically friendly welcome to visitors to the games and, at least in London, unprecedented help to tourists; they've been brilliant and we should applaud them (I hope they get a special mention in the closing ceremony).

The prophesied security problems, even after the debacle with G4S and the last-minute drafting of thousands of extra troops, didn't materialise and there haven't been, as far as I know, any issues at all (and the anti-aircraft missiles, thankfully, haven't been needed).

Overall, despite whatever worries the naysayers might have had about the costs or the undesirability of the games or LOCOG's performance, everything seems to have gone fantastically well. I'm looking forward to seeing what Brasil, and Team GB (I've got used to seeing large numbers of GB medals on the table), can do in Rio in 2016.