Let the Games begin…

AP

UNFLAGGING: A worker helps put the finishing touches to the House of Flags at Parliament Square in preparation for todays start of the Olympics in London. More than 200 panels represent participating countries.

Kevin McCullum

and Agencies

ON THE eve of tonight’s opening of the Olympic Games in London, an upbeat Gideon Sam, president of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee, was in no mood to back down from his claim of 12 medals for SA from the Games – and suggested that South Africa should win 14 medals.

“What are we without dreams? What would you think of me if I backed down and said we would only win four medals, as some are suggesting? I still stick to my plan that South Africa will be able to win 12 medals. I’m not going to put a limit on it and not on this team,” Sam said.

And he was backed up by Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, who welcomed Team SA to London at the South African High Commission yesterday, as British Prime Minister David Cameron said the Games were being protected by the biggest security operation in Britain’s peacetime history.

Mbalula said the achievements of the SA cricket team and golfer Ernie Els had laid the foundation for Team SA at the Games.

The country – which won just one silver medal in Beijing in 2008 – would not back out of its goal of winning 12 medals, he said.

Top prospects include swimmers Cameron van der Burgh and Chad le Clos. The highest-profile South African athlete is double amputee runner Oscar Pistorius.

“I say to the President (Jacob Zuma), we stick to our guns, we know our preparations – forward ever, backwards

never,” Mbalula said. “We are here to make South Africa proud.”

Last weekend, the Proteas beat the English by a resounding innings and 12 runs in the first Test, with Hashim Amla scoring a record-breaking 311 not out – the highest Test score by a South African. Els, meanwhile, won the British Open over the weekend.

“There is no better place to beat the English than on their own terrain, and our cricket team led from the front,” Mbalula said.

He said that despite the women’s football team losing 4-1 to Sweden on Wednesday night, they were not disheartened. “I told them that by qualifying for the Olympics they had already done great things for women’s sport.”

“We are leaving nothing to chance,” Cameron told reporters at the Olympic Park.

When asked by a reporter what his biggest worry was, he said: “Obviously the biggest concern has always got to be a safe and secure Games. That matters more than anything else.”

Meanwhile, office workers paused on their way to their desks to watch the Olympic flame weave its way through central London yesterday before it moved on to some of the city’s famous landmarks. The flame will officially launch the Games when it lights the Olympic cauldron this evening.

Confounding initial cynicism, more than 10 million people have turned out to see the flame during its 70-day tour of the country, eliciting national pride and a sense of occasion.

l The official opening will be broadcast on SABC 2 at 9.30pm.