Snatching Olympic success from the jaws of doom

The water is finally still on the Olympic pool. The tears have been mopped up from the winners’ rostrum and we can at last stop hitting refresh on our browsers – at least as far as searching for Olympic tickets goes.

But looking back, in so many ways, London 2012 has been full of failure.

The rot really started with the opening ceremony, which resolutely failed to be rubbish. Nervous Britons around the world could gradually come out from behind their hands when it became clear that Danny Boyle and his team had created an opening ceremony to be proud of.

A parachuting Queen Elizabeth, the NHS – the musical and a ride through Britain’s culture and achievements from the past 300 years, all conspired to draw mysterious water from cynical British tear-ducts.

Feverish speculation over whether Sir Steve Redgrave or David Beckham would light the Olympic cauldron turned into a mega collective fail when multiple hands lit the flame.

“A feast for the eyes” and “spectacular” was the verdict from the Chinese, whose opening ceremony four years earlier had set a particularly high bar for London to vault.

“A celebration of individuality, idiosyncrasy and even lunacy” opined the New York Times (well, our renowned sense of humour took that on the chin – and anyway, after a ceremony like that, we just didn’t care). The world was impressed and we had expected to be a laughing stock.

Nightmares

The hangover from the grand opening was an outbreak of Olympomania – wider positivity and even enthusiasm for an event we had been accused of moaning about, and possibly dreading, far too much.

The failures continued. The weather, normally to be depended upon to rain on our parade, refused to be anything less than pretty good (apart from deluges during the women’s road race and marathon, which was apparently a good thing). Nightmare visions of having to bail out the long jump pit or hold beach volleyball matches on pontoons proved to be just nightmare visions.

The expected pile of ejected non-Adidas wearing fans failed to materialise. People wearing brands other than those approved by the International Olympic Committee did not end their Olympic journeys on the toe-caps of brand policemen’s boots.

And outside the stadia things worked, too. London failed to grind to a halt any more than usual, airports functioned pretty well on the whole, and no major fights broke out over the use of the controversial “Zil” lanes.

Missiles

Security had been a huge and embarrassing issue in the final countdown to the Games. That 7/7 had happened the day after the Olympics were awarded to London meant that guarding the event from a similar tragedy became a key mission.

From the appearance of missiles on top of the capital’s tower blocks to the outcry over the under-representation of G4S staff, London became increasingly twitchy about whether it could keep its millions of visitors safe. But the missiles have stayed put and security precautions appear not to have been breached.

The appearance of an over-enthusiastic cast member among the Indian team at the opening ceremony was a minor hiccup that prompted embarrassment rather than Olympic hairshirt-wearing.

But more seriously, some expected successes turned into unexpected failures. Mark Cavendish was a notable under-achiever and injury-dogged Paula Radcliffe failed even to make it to the start line of the women’s marathon.

But those minor disappointments were eclipsed by any one of the triumphs; Wiggins, Ennis, Murray, Adams. Andy Murray in particular failed to live down to expectations and won Olympic gold against the same man who had denied him at Wimbledon a month earlier.

When the end of year round-ups appear, they will no doubt be full of tales of Olympic successes. Perhaps they should also detail the many failures…