Olympic Legacy

In the 1980’s there was no rivalry more keenly contested than the battle between middle-distance stars Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe.

Think of the great rivalries in world sport and this was up there with the best…

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bludgeoned each other in a thrilling trilogy of heavyweight battles, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe dominated tennis for a decade and Ayrton Senna’s duels with Alain Prost became a high-speed sub-plot to every Grand Prix….

But in the 80’s you were either a supporter of the natural athlete and son of a market–trader, Ovett or you followed Coe, a man whose veneer of charm would later sustain him among the predators of public life……

And the defining double-header of their careers – two races, six days apart, behind the Iron Curtain – captured the world’s imagination.

Ovett waving to the crowd down the home straight surprisingly took the 800m Olympic gold. Then just as we were all rejoicing to the cry of ‘where’s Coe, where’s Coe’, he shocked us all just a few days later by winning the 1500m crown and subjecting Ovett to his first defeat over the distance in three years and 45 races.

Coe retained his 1500m title in Los Angeles in 1984 but an injury sustained in May 1987 put him out for the next season leaving him with little chance to get ‘race fit’ and be selected for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. When he failed to qualify from the heats of the 1500m at the Trials in Birmingham the Daily Mirror ran a campaign in support of Seb and the President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, unsuccessfully tried to have the rules changed in Coe's favour…..and so as the curtain started to come down on Seb's athletic career his political influence could be clearly seen under cultivation in the ‘propagation beds’ of Fleet Street, Westminster and beyond.

Nicola McIrvine was a brilliant event rider. She won Badminton Horse Trials on ‘Middle Road’ in 1990….and in the same year she married Sebastian Coe.

As Nicky entered the unsaddling enclosure Seb pushed his way forward in an attempt to meet up with horse and rider.

‘I’m sorry Sir, but without a pass you cannot enter the enclosure’, the ‘blazer’ spoke with a resolute authority.

‘But I’m Seb Coe ...’, a simple response but expressed with surprise.

‘Very good Sir’, the protective patina obvious.....clearly the gate was not going to open.

‘Look I’m Seb Coe, gold medallist at the Olympic Games in Moscow and Los Angeles’, as if we didn’t know Seb!

‘Now that is interesting Sir’, the response was delivered with a look across to the next horse and rider entering the enclosure.

‘Look I’m Sebastian Coe Olympic 1500m champion’.

‘Ah, I see, now I can offer you some advice Sir. If you are who you say you are, then it is no more than 400m to the exit…..just over there….if you start now, and run really fast you should arrive just as Nicola and Middle Road exit’.

Once an Ovett fan….always an Ovett fan.

London 2012 - The Last Word

Watching ‘anything’ is no more than a substitute for taking part and cannot be considered as an inducement to participation.

Most people in champion-spawning Ethiopia and Somalia don’t have televisions and will never watch a national game in a big arena.

Most schools in the Horn of Africa have only a dusty patch of ground for a playing field, but we cry ‘foul’ when a few sodden school fields, unfit for their intended purpose, are sold off to bolster the ‘education purse’.

For a few days the Olympics brought us freedom from the horrors of the worldwide financial crisis. Heaven forbid that the success of Team GB should result in our politicians squandering further billions of public expenditure on more sporting vanity. I loved the games….they were great…..but we are still very, very broke.

Do you remember Sarah Kathleen Webb OBE? Of course you do….along with Shirley Robertson and Sarah Ayton they were collectively nicknamed ‘Three Blondes in a Boat’, winning gold in the Yngling sailing class in the 2004 Athens Olympics. And then in Beijing (08) Sarah repeated this success only for the event to be dropped from the London Games programme…..and it was only 8 days ago that we celebrated the last medal ceremony, but how many of the 107 individuals from Team GB, who came away from the Olympics with medals can you name? I’ll test you again in December.