If, like many, you’re suffering from withdrawal symptoms of Olympian proportions, fear not as I am here to bring great news: I hereby formally claim, for King & country, that the modern Olympics are all ours, they’re British, and I assuredly place the Union Jack in the firm rump of all competing athletes. So there.

Everyone knows that the original Olympic Games took place in Ancient Greece yonks ago (776BC to be precise) as part and parcel of a widespread religious festival in honour of Zeus and his pals. Attracting crowds in their tens of thousands, spectators watched naked athletes compete in traditional events such as running, swimming, chucking various things and oiled-up wrestling, before the ritual sacrifice of a hundred oxen. All was well and good for a couple of centuries until Greece’s conquering by Rome and they weren’t held again for over 1500 years.

Fast-forward to Renaissance England and we bore witness to the Cotswold Olimpicks held in Chipping Campden and the much-heralded Much Wenlock Olympian Games in 1850. Furthermore, the brainchild of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was greatly inspired by the sporting theme of Thomas Hughes’s 1857 novel ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’, resulting in such futuristic events as roasting-the-pauper, fly-tipping-the-countryside-with-white-paper and flogging-the-fat-boy. Flashman, Gold winner in the 100m whipping-cane race was subsequently expelled for competitor bullying and testing positive for laudanum. Notwithstanding, Baron P oversaw the formation of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) in 1894, and to the rejuvenated Games, in Athens, where 241 athletes from fourteen countries competed, two years later.

It’s largely accepted that the 1908 London Games were the first in which the modern Olympics began recognisably to emerge. A large purpose-built stadium was built at White City, and largely-amateur athletes joined an opening ceremony parade behind their national flags whilst being cheered on by crowds in excess of 70,000. So, having established they’re really ours the question now is ‘do we want them?’

Hosting the Games is eye-wateringly expensive. London 2012 cost $17bn and the following one in Rio, $20bn. Encouraging hype and optimism refers to the development of a sporting and social ‘legacy’ and to a boost in tourism, national pride and economic activity, but, more often than not, the legacy is a series of underutilised sites: more white elephant than White City. Sydney’s stadium currently costs an estimated $30m a year to maintain. The $3bn costs of Athens 2004 massively contributed to the country’s debt crisis and subsequent economic crash, and almost all the facilities are now defunct and derelict. Debts from Montreal 1976 took over thirty years to pay off. To its credit, the IOC has valiantly tried to drive down costs (Paris’s budget was a relatively modest $8bn) and sought to minimize excess but whether or not a feasible cost-effective economic case can be made for the style and size of our current expectations is highly doubtful. I suspect, in these cash-strapped times, we have already experienced peak-performance.

I’m Carl - my phone isn’t smart, I’ve never sent a tweet, I'll never pose for a selfie, and I’m not my son's friend on Facebook. In fact, I’m no-one’s friend on Facebook. I read, I digest and I regurgitate with my spin on the things that matter. To me.

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