Yesterday evening saw the start of the Paris Olympics, with a slightly mad opening ceremony which probably asked more questions than it answered. But the Games themselves are at least now underway, and while it may be easy to forget with all those badminton heats and 10-metre air rifle bouts sitting behind the red button, today also marks exactly 12 years since the London 2012 opening ceremony. With only Rio and the Covid-riddled Tokyo games to split them apart, London was the last time a European nation had to make such a grand cultural address to the world – trying to present and define its essence even as it was bogged down in its own political-social upheavals.
The 2012 ceremony now stands closer in time to the launch of Millennium Dome than the present day. That should really be one of those staggering, slightly depressing markers of time – like the first Strokes album being older than Bukayo Saka, or Dragons’ Den turning 20 next year. It should induce a pang of impermanence and mortality, and yet it doesn’t really. Because in many ways, London 2012 feels even longer ago, and increasingly like a false memory – one melded together from bits of Adam Curtis b-roll and snippets of reality. Did Frank Turner really play on a giant grass mound inside the stadium? Did Kenneth Branagh dress up as Isambard Kingdom Brunel or are we making it up? Was Mr Bean there, or did we all experience some national norovirus dream?
There are all manner of unreal moments to pore over now: David Beckham bombing under Tower Bridge in a speedboat; Bradley Wiggins sitting upon an ornate throne in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace; the current King doing the “mobot”; the strange omnipresence of Dizzee Rascal’s “Bonkers”. It appears in the collective mind not as a sporting triumph, but like some CCP soap opera. A flash-sequence of heavy branding and light jingoism – and all featuring a cast of characters doomed to varying fates.
Some have fallen far: even as exalted names as Bradley Wiggins and Mo Farah have become partially shrouded in both controversy and tragedy. But as the 2012 generation withers and decays – witness Andy Murray entering the Paris Olympics like an old police horse receiving a medal – it is striking to observe that the effects of those last British Olympics are still playing out in London. Who knows whether Paris 2024 will ultimately be seen as a catalyst for progress, or an event that turns over the rock to reveal all of Paris’s own iniquities and dysfunction (the travel chaos of the last 24 hours might suggest the latter). But London 2024 does prove the Games are the kind of event with the power to genuinely change a European capital – for better or for worse.
Much like Paris and France at present, London and Britain were shivering through some locust years back then. A carnival like the Olympics felt rather out of place. Perhaps it made sense when the bid went in, in some fit of New Labour 25-year-plan optimism, but in the wake of austerity, the riots, oscillating terror threats and a financial crisis, London seemed a slightly odd place for it to land. But, while the medals and the names are fading from memory, the Olympics both framed and shaped a turning point for London in particular. Although they weren’t the only factor, they helped shape the city into the boundless, iridescent, streamlined metropolis it is today.
In early 2012, the capital was in a state of perpetual metamorphosis. At the time, I was living and working in East London, staying in a squat protection scheme in the shadow of Silicon Roundabout (another one of David Cameron’s questionable legacy projects). My rent was £250 a month, and that seemed to make perfect sense. There were parties every night of the week, grand new ventures opening up, and a shared belief that you were in the thick of some great boom. There were cranes all over the skyline, plans to raze every old primary school and Sixties office block in sight, and an understanding that the nature of work and media and wealth was about to be shunted into the future.
Due to massive amounts of tech investment, and digital media companies flooding the area, the City of London started to look rather old hat – almost like it were Billingsgate or Smithfield, a quaint relic from the old town. Like a new generation of yuppies, we had been told it was Facebook ads that would make us millionaires, and for some reason we believed it. Despite the student protests the year before, there was a sense that this softcore, algorithmic capitalism was a new way of life, and that you might as well get on the ground floor of it.
But it wasn’t all forward momentum. The city was still simmering with tensions from the riots the year before, including in boroughs not miles away from the new Olympic Park. I was there when they reached Mare Street, and watched as teenagers climbed road signs, set bins on fire and screamed “he’s got a gun!” into the hazy summer afternoon. The killing of Mark Duggan certainly sparked it, but clearly that cause had swept up some wider disaffection that then exploded on the streets. The commentariat were scratching their heads as to what caused it, and when it would happen again.
The anxiety bled immediately into the Olympic summer. To combat the dual threat of terrorism and/or civic unrest, the authorities decided to effectively militarise the city. There were gun cops everywhere, squaddies at Overground stations and, famously, missiles installed on a tower block in Bow. I can remember being at a warehouse party in Hackney Wick in the spring of that year, and at one point the smoking area became lit up by a glaring, roving white light – the kind you may see in a UFO movie. It turned out, it was a Royal Navy gunboat patrolling the canals, months before the event would begin.
Braving this foreboding yet fervent atmosphere were the “gamemakers”, well-meaning volunteers from the rest of England who were willing to forget all the social chaos to become part of this collective experience. Looking back on images of them now, dancing and laughing in their purple windbreakers and polo shirts, they look very much like a volunteer security force, as if Red Nose Day and G4S had merged in some bizarre way. Perhaps this was one of the few times we really saw Cameron’s “Big Society”.
Ironically for the people I knew who lived within a few miles of the proceedings, it all happened at a distance. I have a vague recollection of seeing fireworks, and witnessing Usain Bolt’s record 100m in a Dalston bagel shop (and not one of the good ones). What remains vivid are the personalities that were being born out of this, the obscure track and field athletes who were raised to demagogic status: Wiggins, Farah, Chris Hoy, Jessica Ennis, a young Anthony Joshua. To the press, they seemed to embody a new, “better” Britain. But it’s a Britain we haven’t really seen since October 2012, bar the optimistic phase of Southgatism from 2018 to 2021, and a quick flash during lockdown.
Time came and people forgot about the Olympics. Discussions turned to therapeutic exemption drugs and what to do with the stadia and architecture of the games. There were all manner of plans mooted, and West Ham kindly gave the area some kind of sporting purpose, but walking round Stratford now, it occurs to me that the planners settled on a vision somewhere between Las Vegas and Midlands retail park. Whenever I’m there, I try to make sense of it all. There is an M&S that employs a legion of people to direct you to the right self-service machine, there are empty restaurants, packed shoe shops, private security units, examples of both glittering wealth and deep desperation. All played out in a landscape of luxury apartment blocks and council-mandated green space. The real Stratford exists somewhere in the beyond.
And I think, in some ways, this is the real Olympic legacy. It was the moment where even a place as rough-edged as Stratford became conquerable. Since the Olympic torch passed through those dark streets of old London, there have been skyscrapers hastily-erected in Acton, chain hotels in Canning Town, a “tech city” in Croydon. Almost as if the whole city was put on the market, or under the spotlight of globalisation.
How that impacts Paris – a city with even more bad feeling than London in 2012 – remains to be seen. While the London edition passed relatively peacefully in the end (a manic Yorkshireman throwing a beer bottle at Usain Bolt aside), yesterday’s arson attacks suggest that some faction of French society is intent on causing trouble. My sense is that this is a nation that’s already had to put up with ultraviolent terror attacks, the rise of the gilet jaunes, and then the far right. They probably don’t really have the stomach for another “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” firework show.
But, clearly, Paris wants the Olympics to usher in some change. Much like London back in 2012, the French capital has plenty of unfashionable space it would like to see reclaimed, and Saint Denis has its parallels with Stratford. How it all manifests, it’s far too early to tell: we may not even begin to understand for at least another 12 years.
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