U.K. has much to celebrate
LONDON — The euphoria that greeted the birth of Prince George on Monday caps a summer of rejoicing in the United Kingdom.
Scotsman Andy Murray recently became the first British man in 77 years to have won Wimbledon, the British Lions rugby team shocked Australia with a historic victory Down Under, African-born Chris Froome won Britain its second Tour de France in a row and the English cricket team has beaten arch rivals Australia in the first two tests of the storied Ashes.
All of this builds on the dazzling success of the London Olympics. Not since the spring of 1945, when Nazi Germany was defeated, have Britons had so much to cheer about.
My way to the Games every day last summer was by train from Camden Town. Retracing the same journey to the main Olympic site last week, it was amazing to see much has changed since then. Venues such as the basketball stadium have vanished. The Aquatics Centre is still there, but looks very different, having been cut in half by lopping off the ends. The Velodrome has lost its roof.
Olympic Stadium has not been used much since. It would be an exaggeration to say that weeds are already growing there, but that remains a possibility as wrangling continues over how best to use the spectacular facility. The solution, or so it is hoped, is that from 2016 West Ham United of soccer’s Premier League will become the main tenant.
Against expectations, the gargantuan Westfield Stratford City mall that was erected as the gateway to the Olympics has not — or at least not yet — become the white elephant that many expected. Still, the tony shops and restaurants in Europe’s largest shopping mall, which were mostly empty when I was there a few days ago, remain an awkward fit with Newham, the scruffy borough which surrounds it in London’s usually forgotten East End.
Olympics tend to produce what one British newspaper described as “a golden hangover” once they are over. There has been hand-wringing in London over whether they will leave much of a legacy or provide a long-term return to taxpayers for the $14 billion spent on an extravaganza that only lasted 17 days.
Much of the debate concerns whether Britain’s astonishing successes at the Games has produced sufficient momentum for the country to keep producing world beaters. Despite the recent sporting victories, the short answer to that question seems to be no. That’s the opinion of Sebastian Coe, the former worldrecord holding runner who was the chairman and public face of the Olympics organizing committee and now heads the British Olympic Association.
Coe wants sport enshrined in British public policy. Or, in his own words, for the government to “push hard to the pedal” to get more people involved in sport as a way to improve public health. He also wants sustained funding and support for school sport and elite sport.
But these grand ambitions have proven hard to achieve so far as Britain grapples with recession.
Still, there remains a “can-do” air at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park which abuts the Olympic Stadium. The entire 500acre area is once again a huge construction site as it was for years before last summer’s Games. About 8,000 apartments are being built near what was the Athletes’ Village, part of a $790 million overhaul to a spot where the world enjoyed so many wonderful moments last summer.
There have been plenty of guesses as to what the London Games have meant to Britain economically. Accounting firm Grant Thornton International reckons that the benefit to the country of having hosted the Games could reach about $65 billion Cdn by the end of this decade. The city’s effervescent mayor, Boris Johnson, predicts the Games are about to give Londoners “a gold payback.”
Truthfully, it is impossible to properly quantify the benefits that derive from having hosted any Olympics.
But the main intangible is something very positive. The Olympics were a magical fortnight. Britain’s many triumphs there and in other sports since then have clearly boosted the nation’s self esteem and restored some lustre to its creaky international reputation.
Britons have much to celebrate this summer.