It's The Little Things That Count

by Dugald Skene

£9 billion, £10 billion, £11 billion. Whatever the final cost of the Olympic Games in London, it's hard to get your head around what that actually gets you.

On the face of it, it's a huge sum of money and many will associate it directly with the finished products like the velodrome, the stadium and the aquatic centre. 

What's less understood perhaps is the level of investment in the things you don't see, such as the cleaning of the river Lee, the demolition of the existing structures on the site or the decontamination of millions of tonnes of earth for the vast swathes of new natural landscaping.

Permanent or temporary, the effects of London 2012

will be felt for a long time to come

These grand visual gestures are one thing, but it was the smallest attention to every detail that surprised me when watching each of the sports on offer during the 16 days.

It's clear that the games organisers brought specialists from each participating sport to set out the requirements for that event, it's venue and it's participants.  What's great about that is that it meant every sport had a unique feel and a different approach to how it was run.

Take the beach volleyball. Enjoyed by many and a real hit of the Games for more obvious reasons than others, the venue at Horseguards Parade had a real carnival atmosphere. Dancers would invade the sand at time outs and between sets, while the crowd would join spontaneous conga lines and dance around the tiers. There was a real, if slightly stereotyped feel of Copacabana beach in the heart of London, synonymous with the sport and contributing to it's overall success.

This level of detail was also laid on for those of us watching events through the tube.  In the basketball, the logo 'Inspire A Generation' was written on the inside of the hoops, seen only by the small camera located behind the backboard and those watching the pictures they provided.  It's the kind of thing you may not normally think of, but those more accustomed to the professional game would advise on as it's a popular place for commercial slogans or adverts as some who watch the NBA regularly would recognise.

Whatever the final sum of the games, it's far better to think it as the summation of hundreds of thousands of smaller things, from beach volleyball dancers & DJ's to basketball hoops.  Of course, some things have bigger impacts than others and many will be taken away now the Games have concluded, but the effect that this level of organisation and expense has had is both literal in it's impact on East London and figurative as we fondly remember the little things that combined to make a truly impressive Olympic Games. 

The more I think about it, the more value it appears to have been. I just hope the effect of this intense focus of expenditure and organisation is far further reaching and a lot longer lasting.

Bolt vs Rudisha - Could It Actually Happen?

by Dugald Skene

Two of the brightest stars to come out of the athletics at London 2012 were global superstar Usain Bolt and lesser known but equally impressive Kenyan David Rudisha.

With his Olympic record time of 9.629 seconds in the 100m, Bolt is now the owner of the three quickest times ever recorded over the distance.  When you consider it's not his favoured event and his relatively slow starting for a bigger man, it boggles the mind.

Usain Bolt claiming gold in London

In equal measure, David Rudisha produced the only individual world record on the track in London, breaking his own world record for the second time in the 800m in a time of 1:40.91.  Like Bolt, this makes him the owner of the three fastest times ever recorded over the distance.

David Rudisha with the gold to go with his world record

In the hysteria surrounding each man's achievement s and those happening elsewhere over the week of track and field in London, it seemed inevitable when people started to pit the two against each other in a hypothetical 400m race.

But could it actually ever happen?

Bolt has muttered in the past that he would be interested in taking on the 400m, explaining that he runs the distance regularly in training to build up speed endurance for the shorter sprints.  Bolt clearly has raw speed over the shorter distances, but Rudisha already has the stamina for the distance.

I would stick my neck out and suggest that if they were to race each other tomorrow, Rudisha would win hands down.  In achieving his latest world record in the 800m, he clocked a first lap time of 49.2 seconds, perhaps around 5 seconds off world class and a full 6 seconds off Michael Johnson's 1999 world record.  I'm pretty sure that if he knew his race finished at that point, he could go at least 2 or 3 seconds faster.

The other big question over Bolt is his motivation.  He is a self proclaimed 'bad trainer' and doesn't enjoy the day in-day out drag on the training track of being the fastest man on the planet.  It's therefore hard to imagine him being enthusiastic about training for an event which requires a relative huge amount of additional stamina over the distances he currently runs.  He may have the raw speed from the start but Rudisha would pull him in by the end.

The physical match up is one thing, the incentive to take on such a race is quite another.  There would no doubt be huge public interest and commercial benefits for both athletes, but I can't see it ever happening.

Firstly, both men are bred to be the best, the fastest, the strongest.  Any contest between the two over 400m would be a compromise and would be unlikely to produce a world beating time.  Having said that, if both men were to train specifically for the 400m, say in time for the next Olympic cycle, who knows what time they could run.

The way I see it, both men compete over the distances they do because they are the distances they are strongest over.  If they wanted to race the 400m, they would, but they don't.

Fantasising over these sorts of sporting match ups is fun but fanciful.  It's like asking who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark -  I don't think we'd ever know.