As director of sport I'm responsible for actually delivering the sports events in 2011, for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. That involves putting on the competitions, liaising with the international federations, putting together the competitions schedule and deciding how we present the different sports and how they appear on the world's TV screens.
If you arrange the events back to back, you've got more than 40 weeks of events that have to be put in place in 16 days. It's 631 sessions and delivering that schedule is something I'm very proud of.
The biggest challenge has probably been the delivery of the road events in cycling and athletics. It means dealing with multiple stakeholders because you have to work with local authorities for planning, and you need a route that's technically compliant for the international federation. And on top of that you've also got to keep the city moving.
I used to be an athlete — I was a professional tennis player. That's actually been very important because having lived it I understand what can go wrong — when you get to the venue and it's not ready or you're not able to practise, or the food that you've got isn't the quality you were told it was going to be. The attention to detail is so very important, because all that an athlete should have to think about is their performance.
My favourite recent Olympic memory is of being in the stadium in Athens when Kelly Holmes got her second gold medal. I think my throat is still sore from the screaming! It was a special moment, because it changed the momentum of our bid. That's when the public really thought, "My word, we can actually bring the Games to our country."
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