So 2012 is over. And what a year it was. The like of which I doubt I will ever see again in my lifetime. So it seemed fitting to recommend I capture highlights through my occasional blog and relive the year once more in a look-back at 2012. A year dominated by the Olympics – from, for us, ensuring we beat the clock with our installations for the Games, right through to the BBC Sports Personality of the Year and even this week’s New Year’s Honours list.
Team GB and Paralympic GB excelled at the London Games. A whopping tally of 185 medals across the two games, 63 of them gold, saw us beaten only by China, the US and Russia.
Usain Bolt guaranteed his place in world history. But who can forget the epic performances of Grainger, Simmonds, Hoy, Brownlee, Adams, Weir, Trott, Pendleton, Peacock, Farah, Ennis, Ainslie, Cockroft, Storey, and so many more?
OK, the footballers didn’t really shine at Euro 2012 or the Olympics, but there was plenty more to cheer.
And the GamesMakers made us all proud to be British and host what must surely be the greatest Olympics ever.
Away from the Olympics, other golden Olympians shone like never before. Andy Murray broke his Grand Slam duck at the US Open in September in an epic five-setter at Flushing Meadows against Novak Djokovic after a run of four lost finals to become the first male Brit for 76 years to win a Grand Slam singles title.
And Wiggo, or Sir Bradley as he will now be known, became the first-ever British winner of the Tour de France in its 110-year history. How great was that to do it fairly, square and clean in a year when the world learned of the dirty tricks less than a decade earlier as Lance Armstrong’s dodgy dominance was finally exposed? Alongside sport, the other shining attraction of the year was the Royal Family.
Incredibly the Queen celebrated her 60th year on the throne. The rain, an ever-present feature of the year as I survey the flooded fields everywhere I go, failed to dampen spirits as the country turned out in a tapestry of red, white and blue to honour the occasion.
The young Royals shone too. Prince William and Kate’s first official overseas tour to Asia-Pacific was a triumph and the announcement that Kate was pregnant and expecting a child that will be the third in line to the throne, boy or girl, was a crowning moment of the year.
I was lucky enough to attend the first tea party at Buckingham Palace hosted by Kate early in the year. Zaun also provided fencing for the David Beckham Pitch at the new FA Centre at St George’s Park in Burton, opened by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
I’ve been to Dubai, Paris, London, Saudi Arabia and Brazil in search of new contracts that will allow us to emulate the work we did for London 2012.
I wonder what 2013 holds in store . . .
