How best to wrestle a giant

Abstract

The Independent's chief sports writer welcomes the capture of the 2012 Olympic Games by London, but warns of its journalistic pitfalls: "No doubt a coming generation of sports writers are already thirsting for the London Olympics of 2012 and the chance it offers them to make their names and their careers, and for some of them it will surely be a baptism of glory. But the most successful will need plenty of luck, great energy for two or three weeks and an absolute refusal to be cowed by the fact that there will be 1,000 stories out there that they will neither own nor sniff. The Olympics have long been a monster of logistics, and that remains the killing problem: you can only be in one place at one time and generally it tends to be where the big story isn't."