SEVERAL months on, and the fact that millions of voters saw fit to crown Kelly Holmes and Matthew Pinsent queen and king of sport at the BBC’s end of year shebang seven days ago, underlines the impact of this summer’s Olympics on the national psyche.
A celebration of the highs and lows, hyperbole and humility that combine on one stage to make sport entertaining, absorbing and inspiring, every four years the sporting world comes together to contest and celebrate all that is great about their chose
n discipline and introduce curious enthusiasts to the wonderful nuances of cycling’s Madison or the razzmatazz of a canoeing competition.
With the elite from more than 200 countries vying for supremacy and more than four billion spectators taking in the action worldwide, it is the arena where heroes become legend, unknowns become household names and every now and then even the seemingly infallible prove human after all.
This time all eyes were on the host nation, the birthplace of the Olympics, who had promised to deliver a Games which combined old with new. While the rest of the world waited with bated breath to see if they could simply complete the facilities in time, the Athenians were always confident they could deliver. And they did. They also wanted to provide reminders of the traditions which proved the foundations for the modern movement and remind the world there is more to an Olympics than crass commercialism and dubious drug-fuelled results. And they did.
There was cheating, with more than a dozen competitors, including Greek favourites Konstantinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou, becoming embroiled in drugs scandals. And there was the security scare when a spectator was allowed to break the cordon and push race leader Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima to the side of the road in the men’s marathon, as gold position subsequently became bronze. But there were also glorious moments which will endure in the memory far longer.
If Sydney 2000 had been a sports jamboree, Athens was about the participation as much as the winning. It reminded us that while this mammoth sporting spectacle will always be about dreams being realised, for some that dream is of gold medals and glory, for others it is about just being able to take part.
Security was tight as the threat of terrorism skulked in the shadows but less than three years after the fall of the Taliban, which banned women from sport and girls from school, for the first time ever Afghanistan had two female representatives competing. Robina Muqimyar and Fraiba Rezzay will enter the history books but they weren’t the only females making a name for themselves, with more women than ever before taking a place on the starting line.
But if the event as a whole was a marvel for Britain, it was a triumph of glory over failure.
The collective intake of breath as the men’s coxless four matched their Canadian rivals stroke for stroke, was only released when the scoreboard finally flashed up the results, with Pinsent and Co in the gold medal position. A sport which rarely commands column inches outwith the Olympics, in consecutive Games it has now commanded massive viewing figures as Steve Redgrave and now Pinsent made history. There were tears and cheers, at home and on the sun-baked banks of the Schinias rowing route.
It came on the back of four years of well-documented ups and downs, crew changes, injury and trauma and the drama of the photo finish, the seemingly endless pause and then the euphoria simply made it all the more memorable
It came on the back of a gold medal the previous night for Chris Hoy. The Edinburgh cyclist held his nerve better than most Team GB supporters in one of the tightest and tensest kilo competitions to emulate the feat of his team-mate and friend Jason Queally, who took gold in Sydney four years previously. And it set the GB ball rolling. In doing so he broke the Olympic record but his was only one of several cycling success stories.
In the Madison, there was a collective groan as Rob Hayles collided with a Dutch rider and clattered down the steep incline in an action replay of an incident which had ended his Olympic dream in Sydney. Torn shorts and a bruised ego - this time, though, he refused to give up.
Partner Bradley Wiggins took up the slack while he jumped on a new bike and they combined to pull back the one-lap deficit and held their nerve in a sprint finish to garner bronze. Like every good story it had heroes, drama, suspense and a happy ending, as that medal completed Wiggins' haul of gold, silver and bronze.
But if rowing and cycling weighed in with its fair share of medals - Scotland’s Katherine Grainger became the first British female to win two Olympic rowing medals, taking silver with partner Cath Bishop in the coxless pairs - sailing and equestrian also sprouted gold.
Scotland’s Shirley Robertson and her Ynling crew of Sarah Ayton and Sarah Webb were the first Britons to secure gold, taking an unassailable lead with one race left, to see themselves renamed the Golden Girls. It was one of five sailing medals.
From boats to horses, a courtroom battle also reaped reward. Bettina Hoy was slapped with a ten-point penalty to deprive Germany of the team gold and the decision retrospectively elevated Leslie Law, Pippa Furnell and the British quintet in the eventing standings. Individual gold for Law and bronze for Furnell was enough to secure silver for the team.
Another Scot who contributed to the medal haul and lived the dream was Campbell Walsh, who enjoyed a fabulous first run in the final of the K1 kayak slalom but had to ultimately settle for silver.
But when the 2004 Olympics are remembered by British sports fans, two distinct images will be recalled. The broken down mess Paula Radcliffe was as the reality of her dream becoming a nightmare dawned, and the sheer glee on the face of our latest track queen, Kelly Holmes.
Just as people tend to remember where they were the day man landed on the moon or Princess Di died, so too will most interested Britons be able to recount where they were as news trickled in that Radcliffe had flunked out of the marathon or which television set they were glued to as she tried and failed to make amends in masochistic fashion in the 10,000m. It was car-crash viewing, taken in through gaps in hands which almost instinctively moved to cover eyes.
It was a different story when Holmes shocked the nation, her greatest rivals and herself by crossing the finish line first in the 800m final. Her eyes were popping out of her head as the result sank in. Years of near misses and injury setbacks paled into insignificance as she showed strength of body and mind to hold off all-comers in a titanic battle over the final few strides and, having run an immaculate set of races to achieve that gold, she repeated the feat in the following days to add the 1,500m gold to become the first Briton for 84 years to achieve the Olympic middle-distance double.
Her second medal came on the same night our sprinters salvaged some pride. Criticised for poor individual performances, which had caused a verbal ruck, they were redeemed when they took gold, surprising a USA quartet who had, until then, dominated over 100m and 200m.
If some of our medallists were having their last tilt at Olympic success, young Amir Khan burst onto the scene offering up the promise of so many more glory days before he swaps amateurism for the big prize purses of professional boxing.
But the beauty of these Olympics were not just the British tales to cherish but the overall package.
The Greeks embraced the Olympic homecoming and enthusiasm snowballed with every passing hour. Regardless what their athletes were contesting, the atmosphere was electric and the chants of Hellas reverberated around every venue as the locals willed their own to victory. At the basketball in the wonderful Helliniko Indoor Arena, just one of the many sublime facilities befitting the super sporting battles within, the USA Dream Team looked like they had just walked into a nightmare as a fiercely partisan crowd reminded them that, when heart rules head, NBA egos and college MVPs mean little.
The flip side of that was the farcical men's 200m final. In protest that Kenteris was not there to claim what his fans considered would be a definite gold, the crowd refused to settle. Every time silence was called for, the decibel level simply rose. The sight of Olympic veteran Frankie Fredericks, a man universally accepted by his peers to be completely clean, pleading time and again for hush on the big screens around the stadium, as misguided fans instead lauded a fallen idol, is one of the few images which will tarnish the Athens Games.
The rest are stories of pain, hard work and celebration. Tales of mental courage backing personal conviction, with a place on the podium the reward.
In the pool, Team GB flopped but the battle royale between two of the Games’ star athletes, Ian Thorpe of Australia and the USA's Michael Phelps, was enough to engross. In the end Thorpe won their only head-to-head battle, claiming gold in the 200m freestyle but, while the giant Aussie won two golds and four medals, it was the American's assault on eight golds that captured the imagination. In the end the American left Athens as the joint most decorated Olympian at a single Games with six golds and two bronzes.
It's incredible to think so much was squeezed into just one Olympics - a Games many had predicted would be a shambles, so concerned were they with the aesthetic instead of the esoteric.
The Greek capital hosted 11,099 athletes, the largest number ever, and representatives of 202 countries took part, more than any other sport event.
Throughout it Team GB accumulated a haul of 30 medals - including nine golds - which topped the 28 won in Sydney and was the second highest total since 1924.
"In some respects we can say mission accomplished, but there’s no question some sports underperformed," said chef de mission Simon Clegg.
Those who failed to live up to expectations still played their part in carving out memories. Those moments of despair will never be forgotten, but as the British public proved when they voted Holmes and Pinsent our sporting one and two of 2004, the triumphs always outweigh the failures and in Athens this summer, there was, thankfully, plenty of success to dwell upon.
