London 2012: Ten years on, what lessons can we learn from London’s legacy?
- Published
The London 2012 closing ceremony included performances from Spice Girls, One Direction, George Michael and Take That
"Our vision is to see millions more young people in Britain and across the world participating in sport and improving their lives as a result of that participation. And London has the power to make that happen."
So said Prime Minister Tony Blair in a speech to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on 6 July 2005, the day London was awarded the right to host the 2012 Olympics.
Ten years on from the start of the Games, what is London's sporting legacy?
What lasting impact did those halcyon days have, beyond the enduring memories of the excitement and pride it generated? The answer is both complex and contested.
In terms of facilities, five of the original venues from the Olympics are still being used.
The troubled finances of the iconic London Stadium - now home to Premier League football club West Ham of course - have been the source of significant controversy. Not only was the £320m bill for converting it after the Games twice the original estimate, but the loss-making facility still costs taxpayers around £8m-10m a year to run.
This is also the third successive year the stadium has failed to host track and field, and UK Athletics is considering a move away from the stadium, where it has a 50-year lease, to be able to stage events during a short window every summer.
More encouraging is the extension of a partnership bringing Major League Baseball to the venue.
The velodrome, meanwhile, will host the track cycling at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
The redeveloped, bustling Queen Elizabeth Park - where members of the public can swim and cycle at modified facilities originally used for the Games, and where there is now a cultural and education district as well as a tech and innovation hub - stands in stark contrast to the abandoned facilities that have blighted some other former Olympic host cities.
Thousands of jobs have been created and 11,000 new homes in the wider area have been completed, although affordable housing targets have been missed, with fears some local people have been priced out of the area.
And yet the 10-year anniversary of the Games comes at a time when more than a quarter of adults in England are officially inactive, and obesity rates among primary school children have hit record highs. A time when half of British women do no regular exercise.
A new survey by the Sports Think Tank has found that 61% of leaders in the sports sector feel the Games did not deliver the legacy promises made, with the biggest failure identified as the core commitment to 'inspire a generation'., external
So was what seemed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make us healthier and more active squandered?
Lord Coe, who chaired the organising committee, believes that without the Games the current situation could be even graver.
"The worst that you can say is we actually staunched the haemorrhaging of participation," the president of World Athletics says.
"It was never going to be a straight line on a graph. Many of the sports we've looked towards to improve physical inactivity have actually done very well. More people are cycling and running than ever before. 'Parkruns' are now part of our national heritage. More people are doing triathlons.
"One of the things about inspiring a generation was to make sure we had better and stronger Olympic teams, and there's no question we have gone from strength to strength.
"That's made a big difference, and one of the profoundest legacies has been the way people have reviewed their thinking around disability."
As Lord Coe suggests, the medal haul delivered by British athletes at London confirmed the country's status as an Olympic and Paralympic powerhouse, set standards and expectations that were then met at the two subsequent Games, helped make the case for continued funding for the country's high-performance system, and certainly inspired some people to be active.
Take British sprinter Desiree Henry for instance. Back in 2012, the Londoner was one of seven unknown teenagers to help light the torch at the climax of the opening ceremony. Four years later, she became an Olympic medallist in Rio, and says the experience of a home Games spurred her on to realise her dreams.
But there have also been fears that hosting the Games might have meant too great an emphasis was placed on winning at the expense of athlete welfare, contributing to the spate of bullying scandals to blight British sport in recent years.
The London legacy has also been tainted by cheating, with more than 140 athletes who competed at the event found guilty of doping violations after the retesting of samples, making it officially the dirtiest Games in history.
According to a recent National Audit Office report, the proportion of adults participating in sport actually declined in the three years following the Games. It said national participation rates then increased modestly between 2016 and 2019, but deep-rooted inequalities remain, with rates of exercise among women, people from ethnic minorities and those in poorer communities of particular concern, external.
"Do we have an active and happy and healthy generation of young people as a result of London 2012? No we don't," says Ali Oliver, chair of the Youth Sports Trust.
"This is where discussion about legacy needs to go a little bit deeper. It did inspire some changes [such as] inclusive and disability sport. We deliver the 'School Games' programme to 21,000 schools, and that was a London initiative.
"But the fact that we've lost 42,000 hours of PE in our schools since London, and have thousands fewer PE teachers, is a signal that the societal shift hasn't happened. We are not seeing PE and school sport of equal value to English, maths and science.
"In 2017, one in nine young people had a mental health condition; it's now one in six. These are the big blocks to legacy."
The Youth Sport Trust is part of a new coalition including the Sport for Development Coalition, Sport and Recreation Alliance and leisure industry umbrella group UKActive, which this month called for "radical change" in the sector. The government has said it is preparing to unveil a new sports strategy.
This is especially relevant at a time when there are concerns over the extent to which Britain's Olympic teams reflect the nation they represent. At last year's Tokyo Games, 35% of Team GB medallists had been to private school, even though only 7% of the population has received such an education. Sport England board member Chris Grant, one of the country's most senior black sports administrators, estimates that around a third of the country's Olympic sports have never selected an athlete who was not white, external.
Beyond long-established concerns over sport and PE provision in schools, many believe London's legacy may have been undermined by a range of other factors; from the impact that cuts to local authority budgets have had on community sport and leisure facilities, to the effects of Covid lockdowns and the current cost of living crisis.
There remains no national plan for sport and activity, the key recommendation of a House of Lords committee following an inquiry into inactivity last year.
Former Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman, the chairman of Sport England - the body responsible for distributing public money to improve participation and activity levels - told me the 2012 Games "proved that just holding a magnificent sporting event is not enough to create a legacy".
"It took a few years for that message to get through and things have started to change now," he said.
"'Legacy' is an easy word to say, but it takes sustained investment in the right places. We want real change in activity. We have to get into communities, and that takes time to set up and we are on that mission now."
This is especially relevant on the eve of Birmingham's Commonwealth Games, at a cost of £780m, the most expensive sports event the UK has hosted since London 2012.
Rather than simply assuming hosting a major event will automatically translate into greater participation, Sport England says it is already investing nearly £35m to help leave a lasting legacy from Birmingham 2022, targeting areas of highest inactivity, and directly funding more projects that lie outside the traditional network of sports governing bodies.
A similarly proactive approach is being taken in the run-up to this autumn's Rugby League World Cup where £600,000 of initial funding tied to the event has been used to generate an additional £25m of investment, helping local communities with facilities, access and various schemes.
Instead of the more abstract concept of 'legacy', organisers prefer to talk about 'social impact', something they believe can be more easily measured.
These are important signs, perhaps, that when it comes to translating the hosting of events into positive change, one legacy of London is that valuable lessons have been learned.