London 2012
The once in a lifetime event truly delivered. Even though i didn't get any Olympic tickets, it was still an amazing experience to have the Olympics in your home city. I was able to attend two events- the men's road race and marathon- and both were brilliant to watch. For all the criticism thrown their way, in my opinion, LOCOG and Sebastian Coe did a fantastic job. The home Olympics has ignited a passion among the British public for minor sports that hopefully can be maintained. This will be the key feature in deciding in the future whether the huge expenditure on the games was worth it. It would be horrible if the venues turn out to be white elephants- indeed, the Basketball arena is one which will be dismantled. The benefits of sport participation among the population are well known and it will be interesting to see if David Cameron follows up on his promise to keep up his investment in sport.
On to the actual sporting achievements, the medal haul of 65 was sensational.UK sport did set optimistic targets, but the team hit them. And the scary thing is it could have been even better- Dai Greene, Phillips Idowu and Mark Cavendish were just some of the big names who failed to win a medal. A total of 29 Golds was a fantastic return, and 3rd in the medal table was also a great achievement. It was also fantastic to watch superb performances from foreign athletes. Mainly, Usain Bolt, who again won three gold medals. it was also another Olympics, more gold medals for Michael Phelps, making himself the greatest Olympian of all time. I thoroughly enjoyed the athletics in particular, and will look forward to the 2013 world championships in Moscow.
England 2-1 Italy (Jagielka 27, Defoe 80) (De Rossi 15)
However, despite the great sporting event it was, I am hugely excited for the new premier league season and this was only ignited by the midweek friendly between England and Italy. Club managers must hate having a 'meaningless' international friendly only a few days before the season starts, but i for one think that its a valuable opportunity to have a look at new players and Roy Hodgson proved that by handing debuts to Tom Cleverley, Ryan Bertrand, Jake Livermore and the two keepers, Ruddy and Jack Butland. Inspired by the return of the excellent Michael Carrick, England kept the ball far better than I've seen for quite a while.
