大象传媒

When people ask me about the online ticketing system for London 2012 one word springs to mind. Shambles.

It's a word that feels very out of place when considered alongside the rest of the project.

So much has - in particular the achievement in making sure that all the venues will be ready in time.

Ticketing has been the one area that has appeared to lurch from one fiasco to the next.

I've been determined to investigate 2012's efforts to stop people talking about the details of the Olympic project since I was told last year that new staff at were required to sign confidentiality agreements.

I wondered why a project with so much public money going into it - 拢9.3bn - needed to be so secretive.

Now I have learned that companies building the facilities in east London are to keep quiet about the details of the project.

It doesn't make me very popular with London 2012 organisers but I'm not a great fan of Olympic anniversaries - 1,000 days to go to the Games and all that.

They are great for people who collect Olympic badges - and, believe it or not, Beijing produced loads of pins with various "days to go" and the same Chinese company is doing the badges for London - but they mean little to the rest of us.

But there IS a significant Olympic anniversary on 16 January. It's going to be the halfway point between London winning the bid in July 2005 and the opening ceremony - three-and-a-half years gone and three-and-a-half to go.

I've been in the Swiss town they call the Olympic capital this week talking to the movers and shakers of international sport.

The conversations in , where the is based, soon got around to the impact of the global financial crisis on sport and the government and faced criticism.

Jizhong Wei, the new head of the , told me he was disappointed with last week's decision by to cut funding to eight of Britain's lower-profile sports including his.

The day after London was in July 2005, I was asked to research and write a book about the dramatic story of Britain's bid.

With my friend and colleague , the sports editor of the Daily Telegraph, I spoke to a series of key people involved in the campaign before we put the book together with London 2012's former communications chief Mike Lee.

I was, therefore, not surprised when Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell suggested this week that London might not have bid for the Games, had people known that a recession was on the way, .

Olympic experts regularly tell me that London's traffic problems are the biggest challenge to organisers of the .

And it's because of them that London 2012's plans to move badminton to Wembley's indoor Arena in order to save money are likely to face some opposition from the international governing body of the sport.

I've been speaking to the where officials are worried about the journey from the to the arena which is next to the main .

I was out on a boat the other day around the waterways surrounding the Olympic Park. It's a great trip and a very interesting way to see all the progress on the 2012 site.

Not everybody is aware of the miles of water in this part of London. After years of being neglected, these rivers are finally being upgraded.

I hope, by 2011, it will be possible for boats to take the public on tours of the Olympic Park when many of the venues will be completed. While security may stop boats coming right into the Park during the Games, it should be possible to get up to the 02 (formerly the Dome) at Greenwich where the gymnastics and basketball finals will be held.

When the Games are over, - a Hyde Park for east London, they say. There are plans for special Olympic gardens with plants from all over the world.

I have no doubt that this could happen if enough funds are provided by the London Mayor after 2012. The environment for thousands of Stratford residents will be changed because of it.

But people in the construction business are telling me that London 2012's hopes of being the "Greenest Games ever" are going to come under intense pressure in the next year because of the economic crisis.

I lived and worked in Germany as a foreign correspondent for nearly 10 years in the 1980s and 1990s and I was always amazed at the .

Every small town I visited seemed to have an and Germany's facilities for elite sport regularly attracted . Whenever I returned to Britain, especially during holidays in London, I thought our facilities were second class, sometimes third class, in comparison.

I still believe that is the case in London.

Olympic chiefs discussed how the are going to survive the at a key meeting on Wednesday.

The 拢9.3 billion budget to build the facilities is under intense pressure because of the credit crunch and an Olympic board meeting concentrated on how money can be saved.

Finding Olympic sponsors has become tougher in today's economic climate but London 2012 may get crucial help in the next few months from the International Olympic Committee.

I understand that the IOC is looking at striking a global deal with an automobile supplier. This would mean London 2012 would not need to sign its own agreement with a car and bus manufacturer, which is likely to be hard in the middle of a recession.

When the Olympic victory parade took place in central London on Thursday, I rushed away from it and headed to the east of the capital where the Games will be staged.

With the greatest respect to Britain's successful Olympians and Paralympians, and to the rest of the country, my belief is that it is among the people of Newham where we will find out if the 2012 Olympics have been worth it or not.

The east London borough is the Olympic benchmark. This is one of the poorest parts of the country which has suffered with high unemployment for years.

It also has the notoriety of having residents who are bottom of the London's league in terms of sports participation - and second bottom in the whole of England.

As parades go, it was pleasant enough.

City boys wolf-whistled at . Office girls took photos of Chris Hoy on their mobile phones and zoomed in on the triple-layered bling around his neck. Natasha Danvers-Smith warned autograph hunters to "watch out for the horse-poo" left by the mounted police escort.

What was missing, as the 12 floats rolled slowly from Mansion House through to Trafalgar Square, was the giddy-eyed Olympic fever which had gripped the nation back in the summer.

There might well have been good reasons why the parade had to be delayed until the middle of October - planning issues, traffic control, the busyness of - but it was hard to escape the feeling that the moment had passed.