And so Britain acquires a new sporting superstar in the form of Kilburn’s Bradley Wiggins. Allez Bradley! they cried last Sunday night in the Champs-Elysees. Ici nous allons, ici nous allons, ici nous allons.
Orgiastic celebrations had begun even before our yellow-tunicked hero had breasted the tape; and in France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Denmark — wherever there are votaries of the velocipede — the kindergartens will soon be full of children answering to the euphonious name of Bradley.
It is turning out to be a bit of a year for British sport. First Andy Murray becomes the only Brit in my lifetime to play in the Men’s Final at Wimbledon. Now a chap from London has become the first Briton EVER to win the Tour de France, the most prestigious cycle race on earth - and all before the Olympics have even begun. So this is the moment, perhaps, for us to tackle directly the last remaining Olympo-sceptics, and all those who say that this sporting festival is a sideshow, an irrelevance, and an expensive indulgence with no bearing on the economic health of the country.
It was only yesterday, for instance, that I was talking to BBC legend Andrew Marr. He was complaining - as is his right - about the state of the economy. He observed - correctly - that there is a lot of gloom around. I felt obliged to try and cheer him up. “How can anyone be gloomy when Bradley Wiggins is about to win the Tour de France?” I asked. “That’s a non sequitur!” retorted the great Marr, who believes in chucking in the odd Latin phrase to keep people on their toes. I was about to explain that he was wrong, and that there was indeed a connection between the winning of bike races and the economy, when he announced that the interview was over.
So let me say now, in this space where Marr’s writ does not run, how I might have developed the argument. I believe that the Games, and the ethic of the Olympics, are of huge importance to this country’s future and prosperity - and that it is all the more important because that ethic has been so unfashionable for so long. I don’t just mean the “legacy” benefits of the Games, though these are already enormous: the investments in east London, the new housing, the neo-Victorian surge of transport improvements that are building the platform for future prosperity. I mean the Olympics as a pageant of achievement, a mesmerising drama of human ambition, success and failure. The BBC has been running a comedy series called Twenty Twelve, and I have finally been able to watch a couple of episodes.
It is all too hilariously accurate. We Olympic committee types really do sit around and talk about “legacy”, “sustainability”, “diversity”, “inclusivity” and “multiculturality”, and contained within those woolly abstracts are of course many good things. But when the Games begin this week they won’t be remotely inclusive - not on the track, not where it counts. They will be elitist, ruthlessly and dazzlingly elitist. They won’t be diverse, not really. They will be an endless parade of a fraction of the top 1 per cent of the most physically gifted human beings on earth. If you want the antithesis of the “all-must-have-prizes” culture, this is it. You either win gold, silver or bronze - or else you are an also-ran.
But the important point about the Olympians is not just that they have exceptional bio-mechanical equipment. It’s not just the paddle-shaped hands of the swimmers or the muscle twitch of the sprinters. What makes the sport so compelling is that it is not enough to have a well-made skeleton or musculature. It is all in the heart, or all in the mind. It is a palpable lesson in human achievement and effort. It’s about overcoming pain, and bouncing back from defeat. It’s about endlessly denying yourself some elementary pleasure, like a Mars Bar or a lie-in, because you hope for some greater long term reward.
Listen to this paper’s wonderful online interviews with great Olympic gold medallists, and how they put in their best performance. You can hear the extraordinary 400-metre hurdler Ed Moses explain his system of measuring 13 paces between each hurdle, and running eight inches from the inside track. Sir Steve Redgrave discusses the exact division of a 2,000-metre race into segments, and the techniques of psychological self-management that are necessary to deal with the lung-bursting agony of the final push.
Denise Lewis tells how she threw the javelin in Athens with a broken foot. Seb Coe reveals his trick for beating Steve Cram in Los Angeles (the secret was to stay in front of him all the way round). As you listen, you realise that these performances were the result not just of physical genius, but also of colossal intellectual and emotional effort - years of self-discipline. The Olympics, in other words, is about character. It’s about the will. Of course, as Baron de Coubertin was at pains to point out, it is not all about winning. But if you want to win, then you need to work. That is the basic message of the Olympics. Young people in this country are going to see it demonstrated, before their eyes, on the grandest possible stage and in the most vivid and exciting way. Of course you need all sorts of things to have a chance of success. You need opportunity.
You need facilities - and it is one of the scandals of our time that both Labour and Tory governments allowed the playing fields to be sold. You need people to take an interest in you and coach you. But you also need to understand that success - in any field - means drive, and the will to win, and the resolve to do things that are dull, repetitive, uncool and very often painful and exhausting. Yes, of course the Olympics is about legacy, sustainability, diversity, inclusivity, posterity and multiculturality. But it is really about competition between human beings; the glory of winning, the pathos of losing, and the toil that can make the difference. That is the grand moral of the Games, and a very good one, too.
It is also the key to economic growth.
— The Telegraph Group Ltd, London 2012
Boris Johnson is Mayor of London
