Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Keeping up with Sebastian Coe, double Olympic gold medallist and the man responsible for making the London Games happen. "We Brits tend not to look at the bright side, and that's why it's good to have someone like Seb in the lead"
Enjoyable account of London's long and expensive journey from candidate city to host of 2012 Olympics. Contract enforces extraordinary commercial demands and allows IOC to act like a state within a state. Was it all worth it?
"2012 may be remembered in Britain as the year East London got branded. London’s Olympic year has certainly given major brands unprecedented chances to attach their names to redeveloped sections of the city"
He was a late replacement for his country at the Rome Olympics in 1960. He ruined his running shoes in training and his new ones gave him blisters. So he took them off, and ran barefoot – the first black African to win Olympic gold
London 2012 is one of an increasingly rare breed: The major world sporting event held in a "mature" country. Olympics, World Cups are more often now heading for emerging economies. This trend will continue
"The Olympic games trundle ever closer, and already you can smell the excitement in the air, because it's being wafted in by gigantic corporate excitement blowers. [But] try as they might to engage us, we're not on tenterhooks yet"
Montreal left a debt burden, Atlanta brought traffic from hell. For Athens, there were precious few visitors and disastrous legacy management. Even Sydney struggled to find a tourism boost. How will London fare?
How Abraham Klein survived politics, prejudice and the Holocaust to become the best referee in the world. "He never refereed a World Cup final—but perhaps the greatest game in World Cup history is a decent alternative"
Where is football's original world cup, the Jules Rimet trophy? The statuette vanished in Rio de Janeiro in 1983, but the story that it was melted down into gold bars is probably not true. And it may not even have been the original
Picture of London ahead of the Olympics. Rough, boisterous, dirty. A partial picture, and not a particularly pretty or optimistic one
Distance runners Mo Farah and Galen Rupp come from different worlds and will line up at the Olympics representing different countries. But as training partners they now share more than many brothers
Six examples of honourable behaviour in sport, from the Olympics and tennis Majors to FA Cup football and the Ryder Cup. You will notice, in reading, that the most recent took place more than 40 years ago
