London Olympic Games: London

London Dept: LONDON For one day at least, the rumours of Noah being the gold-medal favourite in yachting seemed unfounded. There wasn t an Ark in sight under sunny skies Thursday when my flight to the London Olympic Games touched down at Heathrow from Montreal. And throughout the day, every uniformed volunteer I met expressed a delight at the fact it wasn t raining and b the apology that this would soon change. On Friday, of course, it rained, London s wettest summer in anyone s memory leaking once more. So here s the deal: the Games of the XXX Olympiad are going to happen, officially beginning with the opening ceremony next Friday night, and if it means Games-goers can replace their SPF with rust-remover, so be it. From the moment of touchdown Thursday, as Postmedia News Olympic bureau chief Bev Wake and I walked a great many kilometres to and from and inside the multi-venue Olympic Park, everyone with any role in this Games was off-the-charts helpful, friendly and accommodating. From Heathrow runway to my University of London dorm in less than two hours immigration, accreditation, baggage claim and ground transportation by rail and taxi into a traffic-choked city with let-me-carry-that volunteers smoothing every step of the way. Yes, it is early yet. Beyond a few roundabout-challenged bus drivers early this week, already bursting-at-the-seams Heathrow and overtaxed Games organizers have nicely handled the world that s starting to arrive on their doorstep. That could change next Thursday, when Heathrow is expected to welcome a record 126,000 passengers and is possibly crippled that day by a carefully timed 24-hour strike of the Public and Commercial Services Union s immigration staff. That crisis will be dealt with as necessary, a situation that s not on the radar of the helpful volunteers who are here from around the world. One retired gentleman at a bus depot has come from Australia, having told his understanding wife back home that this was an experience he had to live and please don t change the locks. So here he is, a bus schedule in his hand and stories to share about his long-ago visits to Canada. For this fellow, watching buses come and go will be every bit as good as being the chap who will tote the laundry basket behind Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt s lane for the marquee men s 100 metres. Security, as you ve heard, is as plentiful as it is obvious. The British army has been called in to beef up protection since contracted security giant G4S spectacularly and humiliatingly failed to train enough people for their work. It is imposing young men and women in combat fatigues who politely search your knapsack as you head into the sprawling Olympic Park. And it s the local constabulary, some with enough firepower slung over their shoulders to bring down a satellite who, when asked for directions, gladly suggest you walk that way until you reach a fork in the road which you do only to find three or four tines in the fork of an old London intersection. The media corps will outnumber by two to one the estimated 10,500 athletes from 204 nations who will compete between July 27 and Aug. 12, taking part in 39 disciplines within 26 sports at 31 venues through the United Kingdom. The fluid budget of this festival is 12 billion British pounds, roughly $18 billion Canadian, and that s before the troops were called in. Of course, this is all a drop in the bucket compared to impress-the-universe Beijing four years ago, the Chinese pouring more than $40 billion into their show. When Beijing Stadium ushers dropped the ball at track and field, organizers found hundreds of additional volunteers, trained and clothed them overnight and deployed them. We ll be speaking about more than raindrops before this Olympics are history. Athletes are expected to produce 6,250 urine samples for drug tests, an all-time high, the doping police looking for stronger stuff than the alcohol and caffeine that produced the first two bans in modern Olympic history. There s been a bit of an uproar late this week with the announcement that the stunt-bikers were being dropped from the opening ceremony to tighten its duration. The ceremony is still expected to run 3 hours, but a targeted 12:30 a.m. conclusion will give ticket-holders a better chance to get public transit home. You d swear the stunt bikers have been rehearsing dressed as cycling commuters, many pedalling Montreal-style Bixi rental bikes. These people are certifiable, and that more aren t smudges on the asphalt or hood ornaments on cars is a tribute to the skill and steel nerves and luck of everyone on the road. The significant and insignificant of London will be fodder for social media. London is the inaugural Twitter Olympics as events newsworthy and not are reported in 140-character bursts. Not that everyone is a fan of the instant-gratification of Twitter, which will see countless thumbs frantically tweeting the same Olympic result, as if being first in this global dead-heat is important. Says London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe: I have found quite a close correlation between the number of tweets at competitive times and the level of under-performance. I have found a direct correlation between the amount of activity an athlete enters into on social media and their ultimate performance when it really matters but that s for them to figure out. It won t be until early next week that the focus here switches fully to the Olympics. This weekend, London cyclist Bradley Wiggins seems likely to win the 99th Tour de France; up the motorway in Lancashire, they re golfing for the Claret Jug in the Open Championship. But Baron Pierre de Coubertin s gigantic five-ring circus in fact shares the stage with nothing. Whether you re going to watch bits and pieces of London 2012 on TV or immerse yourself in coverage in print and on myriad digital platforms, you ll be witness to performances that will lift hearts or leave them shattered. And that s one of the compelling things about this athletic exercise, and has been since they were wrestling in togas or less: gold, silver and bronze, the title of Olympic champion worn only by a select few, like a laurel wreath, forever. Rain or shine. dstubbs@montrealgazette.com Twitter: @Dave Stubbs div (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.