Tonight:
4°c
This weekend as the cyclists and swimmers of Team GB brought home gold after gold I punched the air - because cycling and swimming are my sports. And there is nothing more inspiring than watching a record-breaking performance in your favourite discipline.
True, I've left it a bit late to become the next olympic breaststroke champion, but seeing Rebecca Adlington smash a world record in the 800m freestyle gave me an urge to dive in to the nearest pool and practise my tumble turns. And when I cycled to work yesterday, I put more leg into it than usual, thanks to Rebecca Romero.
The beauty of our Beijing success is that we've excelled in sports that are open to anyone with a bike, a pair of goggles and the desire to take part. ever more Londoners are swimming and cycling. My own experience on two wheels tells me the roads are filling up with cyclists and bike shops are multiplying in defiance of the credit crunch. At Parliament hill Lido I rub shoulders with hardcore triathletes and pensioners as early as 7am.
This augurs well for 2012, a games built on the promise of mass participation. We also have a Mayor determined to quadruple the numbers of cyclists and a culture secretary dedicated to getting London in the swim.
It is an encouraging start. The revolution in attitudes toward cyclists will surely come with better cycle lanes, stiffer penalties for bad drivers and more bike stands. huge efforts are finally being made to improve swimming in London but at the moment only one 50m olympic-length pool is open, and competitive swimmers must make do with shorter-length pools or freezing lidos. of course, there's a world of difference between the lifetime of training it takes to create a worldclass athlete and a saturday swim or a daily commute. But enthusiasm for any sport is born at street level, and that's where our new role models come in.
Last year Bradley Wiggins whizzed past me in a Languedoc hamlet on the Tour de France. The whole village, from toddlers to great grandmothers, cheered him on. The galvanising power of sport is that it reaches out to people on every level. 2012 will do that for Londoners, if we harness their olympic spirit now. Memories of Beijing will keep me on my bike and at the pool for the next four years, and I'm sure I won't be alone. Roll on 2012.
Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent, on Twitter
