A NATION EXPECTS..............OR DO WE ??????

The games of the XXX OLYMPIAD as they are officially known will commence on the 27th of July 2012, over 10,000 athletes from over 200 countries will descend on London to compete in what is billed as The Greatest Show On Earth .
There is no doubt that the stadia will be completed on time and all venues will look amazing and fit to hold such an amazing event not seen in the UK since London last hosted the Olympics after World War II back in 1948.
The XIV Olympics were known as the Austerity Games due to the poor economic climate !! sound familiar ? obviously Germany and Japan were not invited and the USSR chose not to send any athletes for competition , yet still a record number of countries attended.

There are high expectations that the Great Britain and Ireland team will surpass the medal haul of 19 Golds ,13 Silver and 15 Bronze achieved in Beijing last time out .
We always have strong Rowing , Cycling and Sailing teams but as the Aussies pointed out after finishing just behind Team GB in the medal table in 2008 , we only win when we are sitting down .
Sour grapes maybe , but we will need to improve on our showing at the the recent World Athletics Championships in Deugu , South Korea where we only picked up two Golds on the track .

The host nation always carries more expectation to perform, and despite the over complicated ticketing fiasco adopted by the organising committee , the stadiums will be packed full with boisterous flag waving British support which is sure to gain extra effort from our competitors.

Jess Ennis is London Olympics highly talented and maybe more importantly from an advertisers point of view , very photogenic poster girl .
She lost her World heptathlon title in Deugu and finished with Silver , as did the flamboyant Triple jumper Phillips Idowu , both tipped to win their events . Our best sprinter failed to wait for the starting gun and was disqualified.
The London Olympics will be a success as a sporting spectacle but our athletes will have to raise their standard when the worlds greatest sportsmen and women arrive , and the hope is that our chances of a record medal tally will be as bright as a British summer , just not this years , under a cloud .