London's dream goes up in flames

Back-pedalling and buck-passing joined the Olympic roster yesterday as no one connected with 2012 would admit to inviting a convicted drugs cheat to carry London's torch through the capital.

Which was odd, because Linford

Christie's agent, Sue Barrett,

claimed to have a Greater London

Authority letter signed by Ken

Livingstone asking the former

Olympic 100metres champion to

carry the kitsch stick of fire for an

event in which he's banned by

Britain from actually taking part.

Life ban: Linford Christie

That smell of burning tyres was a

rotten idea rammed into reverse.

'It wasn't us, guv,' they all said, too

late to erase the feeling that some

of them don't know an anabolic

steroid from an aspirin.

Hit rewind. London's £10billion

blow-out came to us rich in the

rhetoric of 'the kids' and what we

need to do to entice them away

from KFC and happy slapping.

The

claim was they would stir from

their Wii-induced trance and all

take up the pole vault.

Many went

along with this portrait of Britain

as a nation of kayakers until it

became obvious that government

budget-bungling had

pushed the bill to a thoroughly

immoral level.

The twin reservations stalking

this Messianic project was that

track and field is so shot-through

with performance enhancing chemicals

that we were busting the bank

to buy a bright shining lie. Now this.

The authors of Christie's invitation

are sending out the signal that

imbibing organ-wrecking drugs is

not to be condemned if the bigger

gain is sprucing up the East End.

There are so many headburiers

who Just Don't

Get It with drugs and

modern sport you would

need 10 Olympic stadiums to give

them all a seat.

A gang of moral relativists

still shout in favour of the

legalisation of steroids and growth

hormones.

They ignore the deaths

of cheating cyclists, the ruination

of lives in the old Eastern bloc, the

endemic fraud of artificial results.

Most of all, they want us to say to

10-year-olds stepping on to the

track: wage war on your body,

poison yourself to win.

Christie tested positive twice.

At

the Seoul Olympics, where Ben

Johnson was in his yellow-eyed

pomp, ephedrine showed up in his

sample but Christie escaped punishment

after blaming the abnormality

on ginseng tea.

Then, in his

40th year, he contested a minor

race in Dortmund after betting his

coaches he could still run 60m in

6.9sec.

His sample from that meeting

was reported to be more than

100 times over the 'acceptable

levels' for the steroid nandrolone.

In his defence he claimed it had

been taken in and out of a fridge

and even left overnight in a car.

In their boundless wisdom, his

fans in the torch-rally department

managed to overlook his lifetime

British Olympic ban.

They saw no

paradox in handing the flaming

wand to someone who's banned

from entering the athletes' village

or stepping trackside in either London or Beijing.

Nor could they get

their heads round the awkward

juxtaposition of Dwain Chambers

being ostracised while Christie

trots across town with the candle.

Then again, athletics failed to

spot the anomaly of his appointment

as mentor to young runners,

so what chance do you have?

Outside Seb Coe's office, where

sanity still prevails, London 2012 is

emanating combat fatigue. This

happens a lot with huge infrastructure

projects.

Our old running

mate hubris is bounding along in

its spikes. Livingstone's mandarins

are blind to the fragility of public

support.

First there was the NASA rocket

of escalating costs, then a dire

£400,000 logo which, in its animated

form, was said to have

induced seizures in epileptics.

Then we found out that London

was splashing £496million on an

uninspiring stadium that would be

hacked from 80,000 to 25,000 seats

after three weeks of sport.

They must know they're pushing

their luck. Then again they're

plainly not reading the papers.

Marion Jones and the Balco scandal,

Justin Gatlin, the Tour de

France, the steroid-related perjury

trials that threaten to put some of

baseball's biggest stars behind

bars, the Chambers furore: is anybody

in the torch-panto office paying

attention?

Christie's cameo is off the menu

now, but the knowledge that

someone even tried to make it

happen will haunt all our thoughts

about 2012 and drugs.

What are

they trying to give us: the Frank

Spencer Games?

A swift lockdown

is certainly needed on the

room where someone blue-skied

an image of a banned Olympic

athlete skipping along with the

Olympic torch, thereby parading

such a dubious example to the children

the Games are meant to save.

HOPKINS REVEALS RING OF TRUTH

Bernard Hopkins has

taken his executioner's

axe to boxing's taboos.

First, he said he would

'never lose to a white

boy' and now he's

telling Joe Calzaghe he

should be 'willing to

die' in the ring in April.

Pin-sharp is the

memory of another

American gladiator

declaring on the eve of

his bout with Nigel

Benn: 'Boxing is war,

and in war you have to

be prepared to die.'

Gerald McClellan was

maimed by Benn's fists.

Apocalyptic hype is

part discouraged, part

privately savoured by

the fight industry.

It's

the most edgy

hucksterism in all of

sport. In theory,

Hopkins is to be

condemned for

invoking graveyard

imagery.

Equally, it's

hypocritical for us to

ask these men to

assault each other for

our entertainment but

expect them to talk like

social workers.

BET WE CAN WIN WITH NICHOLLS

As pound signs winked

in our eyes, we watched

Paul Nicholls parade his

Cheltenham Festival

entries.

Gazing from

adjacent boxes were the

Ali and Frazier of this

year's Gold Cup, Kauto

Star and Denman, until

they too displayed their

equine beauty to a media

swarm.

On and on they

came; an awesome squadron of jumping

talent — the first two in

the Gold Cup betting, the

two market leaders in the

Queen Mother Champion

Chase.

Our host was the

5-2 on favourite to be

the Festival's leading

trainer.

The narcotic

effect was such that it

made you want to back a

Nicholls runner in every

race he contests.

The

two heavyweights aside

— and how magisterial

they looked — Nicholls

seemed to be steering us

towards Rippling Ring in

the Supreme Novices'

Hurdle, Celestial Halo for

the Triumph Hurdle and

Master Minded in the

Queen Mother, which his

top jockey Ruby Walsh

looks sure to ride.

It's

fill-your-boots time.

GASCOIGNE'S BOOK TELLS THE REAL STORY

How risible it seems now that Paul

Gascoigne's life was held up as a

warning to Wayne Rooney.

Even now

there is a reluctance to acknowledge

that Gazza always betrayed signs of

mental instability, with the

accompanying risk of full psychosis.

The booze and the drugs were a

symptom, a catalyst, not a cause.

Yet still you hear denial merchants

say he is a

jack-the-lad who

just hit the bottle

and the pills a bit

too hard.

Right

from the get-go in

his autobiography

Gascoigne is gnawing away

at the truth:

'What I've been

suffering from all my life is a disease

in my head.

'I'm still scared of dying,

that's part of it. At this moment I

can feel a new twitch. God knows

where it's come from.

'I can't stop

myself pulling the flesh on my

stomach every five minutes, over

and over, for no reason. It's as if I

fear my stomach will disappear if I

don't check it's there.'

Frank Bruno reached this nadir.

During a conversation with him at

York Hall one night he made it clear

he thought he was the ruler of an

African country. He also convinced

himself he was Frankie Dettori.

Off

cocaine, which fed his paranoia,

Bruno crawled back to sanity. Sad

to say that Gascoigne has much

deeper damage to conquer.

RONNIE KNOWS WHAT'S MISSING

An old-school hooker to his toes,

Mark 'Ronnie' Regan gave us the

most honest explanation of

England's poor start to this Six

Nations Championship.

Ageless

Ronnie confessed that autumn's

fervour is missing. That's certainly

how it looks.

Regan says: 'If you

look at the way we played in the

World Cup, the endeavour and

commitment was all there.

'At the

moment we're not quite at 100 per

cent but we'll need to be in Paris.'

Tonight. Against France, hell-bent

on revanche.

ROCKY IDEA IN TOON

Note to Chancellor: After

the Northern Rock bail-out

there is surely a good case for

nationalising Newcastle United in

the public interest.

LIVERPOOL'S EUROPEAN PROGRESS INEVITABLE

Liverpool's fine European form

for Rafa Benitez is no mystery.

Tactics are a distraction.

By the time

the Champions League knockout

phase gets here, Benitez's teams

are usually out of the championship

race and so try trebly hard against

the likes of Inter Milan.

You can see

and feel the added intensity. The

players make it happen, not the

manager's chalkboard.