Urbanabolic steroids

WHEN Britain won the competition to host the Olympic games in 2005, this newspaper despaired. London neither needed the attention, we said, nor would benefit much from it. The cost—close to £10 billion ($16 billion) in the end—would not justify even a stupendous two-week party. Better for the circus to go to Paris, where Londoners could attend by Eurostar and the French pay for it.

Nearly a year on from the opening ceremony, London is doing its best to prove us wrong. Some of the mooted benefits of the games—a more sporty populace, for example—have not materialised. But on the site of the Olympic Park in the city’s East End, a profound “legacy” (as the politicians insist on calling it) is beginning to take shape. The money spent may not yet look like “one of the most sensible and pragmatic investments in the history of British public spending”, as Boris Johnson, London’s mayor, asserts. But neither will it rank among history’s greatest boondoggles, as Athens and Beijing now do.