As word came in from Singapore that London had won the right to host the 2012 Olympics, buses full of foreign journalists were winding through the Scottish countryside to the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles. Tony Blair was already there, taking a stroll in the gardens with an adviser who passed on the news. The Prime Minister punched the air in delight. In the buses, the press did something unusual; they cheered.
The next day, suicide bombers killed 52 civilians and injured 700 on the London public transport network. By then the work to stage the Games, not just bid for them, had already begun, and it continued for the next seven years, unintimidated, undistracted by its critics and eventually triumphant.
Like the athletes who