Seb Coe opened the Olympics promising: “London 2012 will see the very best of us.”
On the 10th anniversary of that vow, the Lord of the Rings is in no doubt the Games delivered. “They were a Games made in Britain by people in Britain,” said the architect of that sporting summer of love. “That’s the thing I look back with most nostalgia about.
“So many people came together from communities that maybe didn’t think they had much in common with each other. I’m forever grateful to millions of people across the UK who made it, and I’ll say it 10 years on, the greatest Games ever. I’m not ashamed to say that. I think they were, on pretty much every metric.”
Those who lived it still talk of being on trains, which ran through the night, packed with strangers sharing memories of what they had just witnessed. Of the Queen ‘jumping’ out of a helicopter during Danny Boyle’s captivating opening ceremony.
Of ‘Super Saturday’, when GB stars Mo Farah, Greg Rutherford and Jessica Ennis-Hill all won gold. And countless other moments which catapulted a sporting generation to fame and, in some instances, fortune.
“I’m often asked what it is that I’m most proud of,” the now Lord Coe added.
“For me it was London being seen as creative, competent, multi-cultural and reaching out to the world, proud of our history and protective of our heritage. And the transformation of east London, building a new city inside an old city in the space of seven years, given that under normal economic cycle that might have taken 50 or 60.
“What am I disappointed about? That school sport became a political football. We should have done more off the back of the Games.”
Another regret is 42 medals have been stripped from cheats, making it statistically one of the ‘dirtiest’ Games ever.
Coe takes comfort from the fact the Athletics Integrity Unit emerged to transform today’s anti-doping landscape. “Most of the challenges were not confronted by our inability to test,” he said. We had some of the best testing systems, we had all the technology.
“But that’s all a bit academic if you’ve also got athletes who are protected and are hiding through federations that are just playing the game.”
At the end of 16 days of competition it fell on Coe to sum up a showpiece watched by 11 million fans and on TV by hundreds of millions more. "We lit the flame,” he added. “And we lit up the world.”
