THE successful London Olympic bid is good news for Britain and for Cardiff.
For the first time ever, an Olympic event will be held in Wales with the staging of football at the Millennium Stadium.
There are also great opportunities for training camps for competing teams.
Now is perhaps the time to honour Cardiff’s greatest Olympian and I’m not talking about the excellent Colin Jackson.
Cardiff born, Paolo Radmilovic, was the son of a Croatian father and Irish mother.
Between 1904 and 1928, he won four Olympic Gold Medals in swimming and water polo, including 2 in London in 1908.
Had the First World War not intervened, he probably would have won more than Britain’s greatest Olympian, Sir Steve Redgrave.
There ought to be a statute of him in time for 2012.
Some of the press appear to be enjoying the plight of President Chirac where recent gaffes may have lost Paris the games.
If this leads to his downfall, he wouldn’t be the first French politician to be undone by sport and a British Prime Minister.
In 1921, French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, was attending an international conference in Cannes.
To lighten the tension the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, suggested a game of golf.
Briand’s photographed efforts at mastering the golf swing were deemed so humiliating by the French press that he was forced to resign.
If Tony Blair challenges the President Chirac to a round at Gleneagles, the French letter would be well advised to reply clearly “Non”.