2012 Olympics Every Sub-Editor’s Dream

It’s three years today until the 2012 Olympics begin, and there’s therefore been a torrent of opinion gushing through the media, oscillating between wide-eyed burbling, unashamed cynicism, and terrible, terrible puns.

First of all, Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell is digging herself out of the hole she made a while back where she said that we wouldn’t have bid for the Olympics if we’d known there would have been a recession – now she’s taken the Keynesian line she should have taken in the first place, saying that they’re a “shot in the arm” for the economy. Meanwhile Boris Johnson was praising the public transport system being built to accomodate visitors, and borrowed from Twain when he insisted that the weather wasn’t going to ruin the Games: “rumours of our wetness are greatly exaggerated”. He makes it so hard to hate him sometimes. Still, the two of them seem to have got their stances crossed on what’s going to happen to the stadium afterwards, Jowell contradicting Johnson by saying it wouldn’t be maintained for the 2018 World Cup bid.

But for all their optimism, renewed or staged, there are concerns about both the Olympics staying on track and the legacy delivered after them being worthwhile. The Guardian has a piece on worries that health initiatives are targeting already sporty folk like schoolkids, and not the terminally unfit for whom mobility scooters are a source of constant jealousy. Simon Hart at the Telegraph similarly worries about the lack of bricks-and-mortar facilities being left for many sports, and upholds that paper’s always reliable finger on the pop cultural pulse: “for the majority of Britain’s Olympic sports one is reminded of Anne Robinson’s catchphrase on ‘The Weakest Link’: ‘You leave with nothing.’”

The FT, whose reputation is constantly chipped away at by the legion of embarrassing dads clearly hired to be their headline writers, has increased its pun level to Defcon 4. Actual headlines from today’s paper include: “City clears first Olympic hurdle”; “The benefits of an early start out of the blocks”; “Finish line is also the start of the race”, “Building is on track as recession drives down costs”; and “Financial glue that binds Olympic rings holding firm”. In order to leave for an early lunch of alcohol, the subs finally dashed off “A transport of delight” as their head for a piece on improvements to the DLR. What does that even mean? Is it to snare that important “transport + delight” search-term demographic?

The Sun meanwhile was concerned with the plight of sex workers being trafficked to coincide with the games, with the characteristically tender “Tarts fear for 2012 Olympics”. And today’s Evening Standard defined what’s presumably going to be its games stance in its new post-Wadley happy-clappy incarnation, namely unquestioning devotion to the awesomeness of it all: “London races to golden Olympics”. Golden?! It’s the Olympics as iconic calf to be worshipped.

Still, the Standard’s rose-petal-strewing is at least hearteningly in the spirit of the Olympics as a source of wonderment rather than hand-wringing, and the differences between the Beijing and London Olympics become a bit clearer. With Beijing, enormous amounts of pre-recession funds were lavished on a games that served as China’s entrance into a post-Communist global business community, while London’s just trying to scrape enough pennies together so that everyone will have somewhere to sit. But perhaps the bigger difference is the general attitude towards it – where the Chinese (at least the ones who weren’t being relocated) recognised the pride and prosperity that can emanate from the games, by the looks of messageboards Britons are responding with the kind of grumpy cynicism that depressingly passes as a charming national character trait. We may have to endure many more headlines of the “Olympic progress speared by javelin of funding cuts” variety; but constant bellyaching from anti-sporting Britons is going to be the real, er, marathon.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Creative Economy | July 27, 2009 3:23PM |