Memories of London 2012.

“I’m surprised you’re not watching more of the Olympics”, my wife said to me a few days into the Paris 2024 coverage. “I know, I’m not really into it”, I replied, diverting 0% of my attention from the flow of cat videos on my Instagram feed.

It was the same during Tokyo and Rio. The truth is, since the pinnacle of 2012 when I was completely absorbed in the Olympic Games, hosted by my then home city London, merely watching it on TV fails to excite.

There’s a good reason why you don't need a premium sports subscription to watch badminton, archery or taekwondo. Interest in minority sports is tied to a four year cycle. They’re a novelty - fun to watch for half an hour or so before you get kinda bored. It’s not until the second week when the athletics start that the Olympics wake up.

Ever since the days of the 80’s Athletic All Stars, the likes of Carl Lewis, Ed Moses, Daley Thompson, Zola Budd, Mary Decker and Seb Coe, I would get swept up in the Olympic frenzy. And at the end of every Games I’d ask myself the same question: when will it be held in Britain?

In 2005 I was living in London, working on the startup circuit. It was my naive period before I realised such ideological, visionary and totally unorganised companies weren’t typical examples of productive, or even sane workplaces. But I did meet a lot of good guys.

One afternoon, along with my Parisian colleague Jean-Charles Roghi (what a guy he was), I sauntered over to Trafalgar Square to watch the live broadcast of IOC president Jacques Rogge announcing who would be awarded the 2012 Olympic Games. Only two cities were left in the running: London and Paris.

JC, who had a habit of trouncing me in every argument we had, was the loser that day. As cheering erupted all around me, I started thinking things like; this is going to be incredible, I need to make sure I’m involved somehow, get lots of tickets, maybe even work for London2012.org. During that euphoric moment, I’d forgotten I was utterly fed up living in London and already planning to leave. A reminder soon came. The very next day if memory serves.

9/11. A pair of numbers said together that mean only one thing to every single person on the planet. 7/7 means the same to Londoners. 7th July, 2005 - the day terrorists attacked the city’s transport network during rush hour.

This was an era predating the evolution of exotic concepts such as hybrid or remote working. Living in Fulham meant daily trips on the District and Piccadilly lines to my office in Soho. If I’d see a train on the opposite platform when I entered Fulham Broadway Underground station, I knew any attempt to catch it would be futile. Even at full pelt, by the time I got up the stairs, over the bridge and down the other side, the doors would be closed.

Many times have I laughed inwardly at bozos who, after a comical sprint along the platform, miss out by a microsecond, fling their arms around in frustration, a look of pure distress invading their face as they contemplate a two minute wait for the next train. Enough times have I laughed to avoid becoming one of them. No. I would casually stroll over the bridge, casually watch the train leave and casually wait for the next one.

Not today though. In the time it took me to reach the other side of the station the train stayed put, my first indication that something wasn’t quite right on this particular morning. Probably just a bit of congestion up ahead because a few minutes later the train left. It didn’t get very far.

Stuck between stations for much longer than usual, people were starting to suspect that something out of the ordinary was afoot. The driver had already been on his intercom to tell us our train had lost power but his next message was a plea for passengers to stop trying to break out. No one in my carriage was doing that but elsewhere on the train panic had begun.

Eventually we made it to the next station where we were told to get off, most of us probably cursing the London Underground and their rubbish old trains. This wasn’t a first time experience for me so I knew it was pointless going to the next station or fighting to get on a bus. West Brompton to Piccadilly Circus is a perfectly doable 5 km walk on a nice summer's morning.

I sent a text to my boss telling her I'd be late and headed towards the Fulham Road, one of the main routes into central London, planning to lose the crowd and hop on a Routemaster. But there were no buses in sight. Very very odd. By the time I reached Chelsea & Westminster hospital and saw one ambulance after another streaming out, sirens blaring, no further confirmation was necessary. Something bad had happened.

I was the last to arrive at work. I joined my colleagues who were all in the conference room watching TV.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“John! You’re here! Can someone tell Louise that John’s here.”

Our boss poked her head in. Thank goodness, you’re all accounted for. Stay here, I’m going to arrange for taxis to take you all home. Might be a while.”

This is taken from the website of the British Transport Police:

I was on a tube just a few stops from Edgware Road. Clearly the attacks had already started but the news hadn’t spread otherwise my train would never have left Fulham Broadway with people on it. But that didn’t take long. Our driver, knowing full well there was no power failure, had the sense to make something up and try to relay calm authority to the passengers, probably while contemplating the likelihood of us being stuck on board the next target.

Among the texts I received from family and friends asking for reassurances, one from my buddy in Amsterdam stands out in my memory.

‘I bet you want to leave London even more now.’

Pragmatic as always. And he was right.

Some months previously, a friend had told me he was going to apply for a working holiday visa in Australia or New Zealand.

“Sounds cool. Maybe I’ll do that one day.”

“Well, don’t take too long. The age limit is 30. You’re 30, right?”

Right. On a whim, I’d applied. Not seriously thinking I would actually use it, a visa to work in New Zealand was currently sitting in my passport, valid for a year from the day I entered the country but only if that was before my 31st birthday. I double checked my life to make sure I had no wife, kids or mortgage. No. No. Nope. Screw it, why not?

I’ve shared some of the experiences I had in New Zealand on The Rabbit Hole. There were times when I thought I might permanently settle there and I could have gone anywhere I wanted when the time came to leave. I had no intention of returning to London but, as it turned out, I did. Why? Because I was tricked. I’ll write about that another time because I’m already way off topic. This article was supposed to be about my memories of the 2012 Olympic Games so let’s get back to that.

Fully refreshed after a year in Middle Earth, a new supply of energy and enthusiasm frothing inside me, I settled back into the London rat race but now that I was varnished with a little bit of Kiwi cool, things would be different. No more startups for starters. Working for a normal company that knew what it was doing and employed enough people to do it meant life was a lot easier this time around.

My thoughts turned to the Olympics again. I took part in my first London Marathon around this time and witnessing how such an enormous event was organised, largely by people who gave their time for free simply because they wanted to help out, I applied to be a volunteer.

‘We're very pleased...’, said an email from the London 2012 Organising Committee, ‘...to offer you the chance to become a Games Maker.’ My passion for sport, community and the Olympic ethos obviously shone through during my interview but given that 70,000 of us were recruited, the largest peacetime mobilisation of a human resource ever seen in the UK, it would have been more of an achievement to fail.

Games Maker - that sounds important. I wonder what I’ll be doing exactly? In fact, that was the term given to all the volunteers. “You will make the Games”, we were told at our first orientation meeting. “The difference between a good Olympics and a great Olympics is the volunteers.”

My job title was something like Guest Experience Officer, a broad role that basically entailed making sure everyone went home declaring to the world how super awesome the London Olympics had been. But it soon became clear there were far too many of us. During the first week I had nothing more useful to do than pick up litter or confiscate visitor’s water on hot summer days. It was boring and groups of us just standing around looked bad.

One afternoon, I was sent to the basketball arena and told to stand in a corridor outside the teams' preparation zone, with the instruction that under no circumstances should I speak to or acknowledge the players.

“This is paramount. They need to be completely focussed. Only specially trained liaisons can approach them. Is that clear?”

“Yeah, but there are only athletes in this area. What do you want me to do here?”

“Whatever we might need you for.”

So I stood in a corridor for three hours looking like a donut. The organisers didn’t know what to do with such an enormous, free resource and consequently a lot of people didn’t bother coming back. But less volunteers on hand meant more interesting and varied tasks as the Games went on. For the next ten days I had the time of my life.

I got to sit with the Danish handball squad during a game should any of them need the toilet, drive a scooter at top speed across the Olympic Park to deliver a swimmer’s gear that had somehow ended up at the Velodrome, escort The Red Dragons, a team of beautiful Ukrainian cheerleaders, from their bus to the basketball court, help to build the stage for the closing ceremony while The Arctic Monkeys rehearsed. It was a blast.

The highlight was the women's football final at Wembley Stadium: USA v Japan. My first job was to help spectators as they came through the gates. With what?, I wondered, but you’d be surprised how many kids I looked after while their parents went off to buy souvenirs.

A lady dressed from head to toe in star-spangled-bannery-ness; fake tattoos, comedy glasses, Uncle Sam hat, face paint, dangling earrings - any accessary that could possibly be attached to a human body, came over.

“Hi honey. You know, y’all look soooo cute in those outfits. Do ya mind holdin' this for a sec?” She hands me her drink and starts rummaging through her handbag.

“Hi. Welcome to Wembley. Who are you supporting today?”

Spangly stops what she’s doing, glances down at her attire then stares at me like she’s just encountered the dumbest Limey ever. Then she realises I’m joking. Her face creases up, she doubles over and the loudest laughter I’ve ever been blasted with at such close proximity explodes out of her.

“Bianca!”, she shouts, almost weeping. “Bianca! C'm over here. This guy just asked me”... more howling laughter... “this guy just asked me”... stops to try and breathe... “ah Gawd ya have to c'm meet this guy. Ya won’t belieeeeve what he just said t'me...”

Bianca and Spangly went to find their seats. I could still hear her hooting away from another part of the stadium several minutes later. I wonder if her town got a good report of how awesome the Games Makers were when she returned home.

During the match I was sent to look after the journalists. I watched the Olympic Football final from the luxurious surroundings of the press box at Wembley Stadium. Volunteers had been told not to expect any perks or free tickets but today I'd lucked into some kind of fantasyland. All I had to do for such a treat was get drinks at half time.

I assumed I shouldn't disturb the reporters I was supposedly looking after but they were very friendly and let me sit and chat with them while they watched the game and wrote their notes.

“Who gets your drinks at other events when there are no volunteers?”, I asked.

“No one. Ever. That’s why we’ve loved covering these Olympics. We love you guys.”

Turning a good Games into a great Games; the Games Maker policy surpassed all expectations. We received glowing praise from spectators, delegates, organisers and athletes. We were given a standing ovation during the closing ceremony. Whenever I travelled across London in my uniform, people made a point of coming over to say thank you.

Those were proud moments. All it took was the world’s biggest sporting event to bring out the friendly, helpful and welcoming attributes lying latent in most Londoners. For two weeks at least. But now I have to live with an unanticipated downside; after all those amazing experiences, watching ping-pong on TV every four years doesn’t do it for me anymore.