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For the first time since that indelibly uplifting summer of 2012, I wandered through the Olympic Park this week. The memories came flooding back as, for £11 between four of us, we swam in the very pool where Michael Phelps made history.

For another £22 each (including bike and helmet hire, and an hour’s group tuition), we cycled around the wooden velodrome of Sir Chris Hoy’s epic triumph and Victoria Pendleton’s tears, feeling the thrill of defying gravity on its daunting 42-degree wooden banks.

Perhaps one day, too, we will sit again in the stadium where Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford put the Super into Saturday, and Usain Bolt danced down the track into immortality, although I may resent paying that entrance fee. When West Ham United reopen the doors, me, you — all of us — should be demanding a free ticket given everything we have already put into that ground.

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