An estimated one in three of the world’s six billion people will watch the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games. How will Britain fare in that global spotlight?
Having committed more than £600 million to prepare our athletes and competitors, there’s not much more that the government can do on the haul-of-medals front. The Cultural Olympiad, which will present the best of our arts and culture, is another matter.
Undoubtedly, Britain has some of the best museums and galleries, concert halls and theatres, and some of the finest artists in the world, so ours should, as Tessa Jowell hopes, ‘be better than any Cultural Olympiad that has ever been before’. We have five years in which to make it so, but we had a thousand to prepare the Millennium celebrations and they received somewhat mixed reviews.
The marriage of sports and the arts has its origins in the first Games in 776 bc when each Greek city sent its best athletes, artists, poets and performers to Olympia.
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