The doubts raised then were, to a large extent, the same as those being raised now. Critics fretted that London's transport system would not be able to cope, that there would be too much disruption, that the International Olympic Committee's rules would turn the capital into a police state, that poor little Britain could never hope to organise an event on such a scale. Such fears were not, of course, irrational. For those living in the capital, it certainly will be awkward to get from place to place for the duration of the Games; and the G4S debacle was a failure of planning and preparation. Yet as Lord Coe, the head of the organising committee Locog, argued yesterday on the Today programme, an Olympics is a vastly complex operation, involving thousands of separate contracts. The shock is not that something has gone wrong, but that so little has. As Lord Coe might also have said, the run-up to an Olympics is always shrouded in gloom. In Beijing, the smog was expected to prevent the marathon and other endurance events being held. In Greece, the facilities would not be finished. In Sydney, the triathletes would be eaten by sharks. On every occasion, that gloom faded the instant the Games began, as the host city's exhilaration and the passion and skill of the athletes captured the world's imagination. Will the same happen in London? The British gift for cynicism has already led the foreign press to characterise the city as underwhelmed by