ALL the beknighted grand guns have arrived - Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Steven Redgrave, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, oh aye, and that principal commoner, Tony Blair.

The reason for so much ennobled sporting influence, Blair's Newcastle United affections aide, is that tomorrow the BIG decision will be made as to who will host the 2012 Olympic Games.

The front-runners are Paris and London with the French capital a Gallic 'nez' ahead of a British bid, which has been magnificently spearheaded by that tough of the track now turned toff of the pack, Lord Coe.

The International Olympic Committee are gathered in, of all places, Singapore, where the humidity will be nothing in contribution to the buckets of perspiration gushing from the candidates as the minutes tick away to discovering who will land sport's greatest prize.

It's pointing to as close a finish as that nerve-shredding middle-distance rivalry between Coe and Steve Ovett when the duo bestrode the athletics world.

Each won medals aplenty, both trousering the treasure trove of Olympic gold, each held world records galore. But victory tomorrow, you suspect for Coe, would surpass all his previous triumphs after fronting a bid that has picked up the pace from the back of the race to edge closer to that finishing tape. Now will the gathering surge be enough to power it over the line ahead of the French?

Hand in hand with the London bid has attended a large degree of cynicism, similar to that which greeted the pop music community's Live 8 response to the fatal debt problems throttling Third World nations. All well and good, chide cynics, who never offer any alternative to an issue that reflects so wretchedly on the western world.

London's 2012 bid has been accorded equal measures of shoulder-shrugging world-weariness. What's it going to cost? Surely, it's a white elephant like the Millennium Dome and other such doomed projects?

Come on, come on - this is the Olympics, the planet's most pulsating, fascinating, exhilarating and ultimately uplifting sporting event.

So what if it means the outlay of millions of pounds? It's amazing how funds can always be found for conflict even when wars have no legal basis or they mask baser motives and also do not have the will of the people behind them. Yet when anyone asks for cash for a dash of sport all those irritating inhalations of breath break out.

Whatever the crass commercialisation, the brash branding, the inevitable stash of stimulants, the Olympic Games is quintessentially the supreme gathering of the elite of the world's athletes in one place, at the one time, to challenge each other.

Yes, there will be cheats, and yes, there will be those who will try to confound and confuse the rules to ensure they are the fastest, the strongest, the highest and the furthest.

But for all that, the Olympics are a demonstration of daring and endeavour that elevates humans beyond the mundane and the hum-drum. They are a celebration of the power of sport that ultimately reduces the drug and cash scandals to sideshows.

It is 57 years since Great Britain last hosted the Olympic Games. Even if tomorrow's vote is favourable, that gap will have widened to 64 years since a nation as sports-conspicuous, as sports-conscious, as ours has entertained the world's best.

Five ring-fingers crossed, let us hope the IOC gets it right tomorrow and opts for a true-Brit 2012.

Updated: 10:25 Tuesday, July 05, 2005