27.07

London 2012 – the real legacy

London 2012 - the real legacy 080214 Trinidad Tobago 032 I took this picture on a UNICEF field visit to Trinidad & Tobago back in 2008, when we were in the early stages of planning the London 2012 legacy programme.  Next to the court a young boy was knelt down sharpening a massive knife.

Today sees the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in London. This was an important date in my calendar for many years, so it is with mixed emotions that I find myself watching it from a distance on the other side of the world.

The Olympics have been a major feature in my life and a source of many adventures. It is an event like no other – there’s a reason they call it the Greatest Show on Earth.

My first Olympic adventure was back in 1998 when I blagged myself a job at the Nagano Winter Olympics, as language support for the British Bobsleigh Team. I managed to wing a month off uni and got flown out to Japan by the British Olympic Association. The bobsleigh boys were the only British team to win a medal at that Games, and we had one big party afterwards to celebrate! It was an amazing month where all sorts of things happened – like finding myself having to locate someone to respray the bobsleigh the day before the competition, learning how to make noodles by hand and lunching with Princess Anne at our house in the mountains. It was an incredible feeling to be part of something like that, and the fireworks at the Closing Ceremony were nothing short of spectacular. I ended up writing my undergraduate dissertation based on the management of the Nagano Games, and that opened many other doors…

My next Olympics was Athens 2004, where I ran a series of workshops at the Olympic Youth Camp on behalf of UNICEF. Luck landed me in the Olympic Stadium on the day of the mens’ 100m final, boogying in the stands at the midnight beach volleyball competition, drinking tea with Carl Lewis and somehow inside a party full of old Olympians.

Fast forward to 2008 and I am at the Beijing Olympics, at a reception to garner support for International Inspiration, the international social legacy of  London 2012 (more on this below).

And then to Turin in Italy for the 2010 Winter Olympics, where I cheered myself hoarse watching an old friend compete in the Skeleton competition.

To me the Olympics represents celebration of the human spirit, friendships new and old, staggering human achievement, moving stories and true inspiration. And that’s not from their marketing brochure, that is from my personal experience. It truly is something else.

Back in 2005, when London won the right to host, they promised to use the event to inspire a new generation of children all around the world into sport, and have a positive impact on their lives as a result. Inspired by that promise, I proposed a seed of an idea to the Executive Director David Bull and then President of UNICEF UK, the brilliant Lord David Puttnam, and together we pitched it to the British government and the London 2012 Organising Committee. Many iterations later, and thanks to the incredible commitment of hundreds, if not thousands of people, that idea became International Inspiration, the first ever international social legacy from an Olympic Games.

When the flame is lit in the Olympic Stadium tonight, it will signify many things – not just the start of the competition, or a nod to world peace, but that a promise has been fulfilled. As a result of that legacy commitment, and under the tireless commitment and inspiring leadership of Lord Sebastian Coe and Sir Keith Mills, 12 million children in 20 countries have had the chance to get involved in sport and improve their lives in some way as a result – some learning life-saving skills, others getting back into education, some using sport as a way to deal with tough things in their lives.

In the end I was only one of many people who made it happen, and after I left UNICEF some time ago, others took the reigns and made it fly. But today, for this moment, I am grateful and proud, and I hope it is the first of a new tradition that when nations are granted the honour to host a major global event of this nature, that they look carefully at what good can come from it, and how they can use it for positive social change, both at home and abroad.

Long live the Olympic Games – very possibly the Greatest Show on Earth!

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