England’s football team may have crashed on penalties, but no matter – that was only the start of a summer sport-fest, with London 2012 providing the substantial main course.

London 2012 Olympics are supposed to be the ‘regeneration games’ – the games that will ‘inspire a generation’ – and the rhetoric could barely be more keyed up.

This summer’s Games are emblematic of the way in which sport in general is now asked to perform a substantial political and economic role.

The medal table is the one metric for Britain’s success this year and more important, perhaps, than any sporting success is the Olympic effect on national morale, sporting participation and even the UK’s faltering economy.

To paraphrase Lord Turner on the banking industry, sport has become ‘socially useful’.

That’s a shame, because the likelihood of the Olympics achieving many of the tasks we have set it is small. As with sport more generally, London 2012 has been made to over-promise and is sure to under-deliver.

Paul Bickley | Left Foot Forward

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