I had a great pre-Olympic experience last weekend. I was invited by Pierre La Fontaine to witness the Olympic and Paralympic swimming trials. Pierre is CEO of Swimming Canada, and National Coach to boot.
It was fun going into the Stade Olympique in Montreal, meeting officials and swimmers, and offering them a public welcome to the London Games. I used to swim myself, deep in the last century, and you never forget the smell of chlorine, or ploughing up and down those lanes. The best bit is the adrenaline of competition, and it was great to watch the two ends of the spectrum: the 50 metre sprint finals – the splash and dash – and the grind of the 1500 metres – which burns more, the lungs or the arms, is hard to know.
But the swimmers hurled themselves into it, with eyes on the prize: becoming an Olympian.
I said to the swimmers that they had ahead of them one of the jewels of London’s Olympic Park: the magnificent Aquatic Centre, designed by Zaha Hadid and already praised for its combination of spectacular architecture and state-of-the-art competition and warm-up facilities.
Of course, the Aquatic Centre’s setting is amid the 4,000 trees and world-class amenities and infrastructure of the Park itself – risen in East London from the ashes of war and neglect to become Europe’s largest urban park. Its legacy will be to serve sport and the community for decades to come.
London is looking forward to the Games, but is particularly proud to host the 14th Paralympiad. This great movement grew out of games staged for wounded veterans of World War Two at the hospital of Stoke Mandeville, during London’s 1948 Olympic Games (London is the only city to have staged the games three times – 1908, 1948 and now this year).
So we feel strongly that the Paralympics are coming home, while the power of modern telecommunications takes them simultaneously across the globe.
I really enjoyed my visit poolside, and wish the teams good luck. They just have to leave a few medals for the rest of us.