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When I went to my first Winter Olympics in Albertville in 1992, I found myself staying in the same hotel as hundreds of volunteers in the ski resort of La Plagne.

We often ate meals together and I got to know quite a few of the volunteers personally during the Games. For the first time I understood what excitement volunteers can have about being part of the Olympics.

I remember vividly dropping one of them off at a railway station at the end of the Games, a young French P.E. teacher called Christine. I carried her bags to the platform and Christine promptly burst into tears.

“Why are you crying?” I asked her. “Because the Olympics are over, ” she replied. “And I’ve enjoyed it so much.”

I was struck by the emotion that many of the French volunteers had in Albertville and, as a result, I’ve have a huge amount of respect for volunteers at the 10 Olympics I’ve been to since.

Without them, the Olympics don’t function. Unlike me, they are not being paid to work at the Games. Yet, they set the tone for the Games because they will help competitors, officials and spectators from around the world.

London 2012 have now launched their volunteer recruitment programme. If you want to be part of it, go to their website.

I was at the launch at the Olympic Park when singer Alesha Dixon posed for photographs to promote the scheme.

I’m not sure London 2012 have got their PR right here. McDonalds are involved in the process and that means their restaurants will be full of information on volunteering and the company will be doing a lot of training.

Like Alesha, that will help 2012 get their message over to a younger audience.

But actually the best volunteers I have come across at Olympics are over over 50 or over 60. In 2000, for example. Sydney used a lot of silver-haired ladies to direct people around the Olympic Park and they were brilliant.

People respect the Saga generation and they are also much better at handling stressed media or spectators because they have more experience in life.

So, 2012, next time you promote volunteering, please roll out a celebrity over 60. How about David Jason, Roger Moore, Helen Mirren, Terry Wogan or Michael Parkinson?

2012 isn’t just for the youth of the world.

The quad that has been racing as Great Britain all summer – Katherine Grainger, Anna Watkins, Beth Rodford and me – put on club kit to represent Marlow, Leander, Gloucester and London.

Here’s my diary from the event.

Grainger, Watkins, Rodford and Vernon compete in rough water at Henley – Photo: PA

Thursday

We had an early row on the course to get our bearings, check our steering, and to generally enjoy the atmosphere. I had a good look around the course to make sure exactly where the markers are.

At Henley, the row to the start can also be tricky with punts and drunken people in boats charging up and down, so sitting at bow I’ve put eyes in the back of my head to watch out for all hazards. If we do crash, I will personally take the impact so I’m very keen for that not to happen!

Returned to our national training centre down the road at Caversham for our second session, where it seems pretty quiet after all the excitement of Henley.

The crews not racing are training as normal throughout the regatta so racing is definitely a bonus as it gives you a bit of a rest – we’d all rather race than endure our normal training load of three tough sessions every day.

I find it frustrating that there isn’t a full complement of events for women – there are three for women, compared with 16 for men.

The event is run by the Henley Stewards and they are entitled to do what they want; and I am fully aware that for various reasons, including that most women quit rowing in their 30s, the standard of women’s domestic rowing doesn’t have the same depth as the men’s scene.

However, to restrict women to three open events – which means everyone from club rowers to internationals – seems a pity. Let’s have a junior event for a start. Henley is such a fantastic showpiece for British rowing it seems a shame to not have a full women’s representation.

Friday

Kick-off! And can I say that I am now officially hooked on Henley. With all the fuss about blazers, Pimm’s, skirts below the knee and so on, you forget what the essence of Henley Royal Regatta is: absolutely top-class international and club racing on home water, which is, (as I’ve mentioned before in this blog) the ultimate buzz for any athlete.

I’d also not appreciated just how close the racing lane is to the bank here. You can virtually hear the pop of champagne corks and the chink of glasses; and as you race down the course you almost feel the spectators are right on top of the boats as the boozy cheers from the towpath give way to more restrained applause in the Stewards’ Enclosure. This is brilliant!

Most of my mates were doing the social bit today, so after we’d raced I put on my dress and headed out to see them all. Henley’s a great place to catch up with people; you can really take the tradition or leave it.

You can opt for the formal blazers, expensive champagne and oysters in Stewards’, or go for barbecues in the field and picnics down the riverbank. Whichever way you go, there’s such a positive atmosphere in the whole regatta and there’s so many friends to bump into.

Saturday

Woke up with a pretty stiff neck this morning – it must have been a consequence of spending most of my rows looking over my shoulder every few strokes.

Having beaten a Belfast crew yesterday, our opposition today is a Canadian quad which is actually a composite of their lightweight and heavyweight doubles.

We thought we’d have a crack at the record to the barrier – about 640 metres down the course – which had been set in 2001, and broke it by a second, which in crosswind conditions was something we were pretty pleased with. Another good row which was a step on from yesterday.

Swung by the press box to do some tweeting for the Rowing Voice, an online magazine for rowers, with Rachel Quarrell and Zoe de Toledo, who are the editors.

The press box is just past the finish line and is in fact set slightly on the course so you get a fantastic view of the boats coming down towards you.

Quick interview for BBC Radio Berkshire, where I was asked about the unique nature of Henley, with Olympians alongside schoolboys and club rowers, but no sense of being stopped for autographs.

My reply was that one of the best things about rowing is that it is very egalitarian: it is such a tough and demanding sport that there’s a huge mutual respect between competitors and between rowers at all levels.

I object quite strongly to all these open-top bus parades that seem mandatory now. As one of my friends often points out, “You’re not saving the world, you’re doing PE.”

There are so many people who are contributing to society far more than we are, yet we are held up as heroes. Let’s keep perspective over what we do: it’s not life or death, it’s sport. It’s incredibly exciting, passionate, and can dish out tremendous highs as well as crushing lows, but it’s still just sport.

Later that evening I cycled back down to the boat tent to get our race times for the following day. Saturday evening is a pretty drunken affair so I had to weave my bike through the crowds of sunburnt Pimm’s-soaked punters. We were scheduled for a mid afternoon final.

Sunday

Finals day. After an early row on the course, we returned to my house in Henley to chill out for a few hours before our race. The problem with racing so late is that you miss all the other finals, so we kept up to date with what was happening with Regatta Radio, which broadcasts throughout Henley week.

The wind was building throughout the day and by the time we hit the water, was probably as strong a headwind as any in which I’ve competed. It made for a pretty brutal race but we were pleased to beat the Kiwi national quad for the win.

After that it was a quick change, prizegiving, and in true Henley fashion, we finished the regatta by swigging champagne from the trophy.

Henley is very very different to any other kind of international racing – there is a reason the last true international race held here was the 1948 Olympic regatta! However, a win is a win, whatever the circumstances, and we’re glad to have this boost as we move into the third and final World Cup event in Lucerne.

Watch Sunday’s finals of the Lucerne World Cup live on the red button and online (UK only) 0920-1040 and 1200-1355 BST, with selected highlights online afterwards. Annabel’s quad races at 1231. Full highlights on Monday on BBC Two, 1400-1500 BST, and for seven days afterwards on iPlayer.

There’s also curiously little drama where sport is a key part of the story, despite its importance to so many people’s lives, and I suspect that’s partly because too much of the sport and arts worlds don’t understand each other. There are exceptions, but one of the challenges around 2012 as a year is that mixing culture and sport can be an oil-and-water job.

So an Olympic medal to the people who made “Dive”, which is showing on BBC Two this Thursday and Friday and then available on the iPlayer. You can read more about it here – but it’s a simple story.

A teenage girl called Lindsey is training with the hope of being part of the GB diving team for London 2012. But she gets pregnant, and the film is about the way she and her boyfriend try to sort out their lives.

I’ve just been watching a preview, and it’s terrific: powerfully acted and great to look at, as you’d expect from someone with the track record of Dominic Savage.

Aisling Loftus stars as Lindsey in Dive

It is, of course, about far more than sport. Apart from the big themes around sex and pregnancy and coping with that when you’re young, there’s a vivid sense of what it’s like growing up in a small town with the pull of an outside world – though Lindsey’s boyfriend isn’t exactly encouraging when he finds out she’s aiming for the London Games. I’ll delete the expletives, but he tells her that must be why she’s so miserable and asks of the Olympics “how s*** is that?” (Warning: your granny may not like the grittier sequences.)

And yet there’s a definite sense here of how sport makes a difference, and I was interested to read the director’s take:

“Early mornings and the individuality of diving, it’s the most obvious and perfect individual sport. The time it takes, and dedication to get one dive right and yet the margin of error is so slight. It’s also the idea that the dive is like life, taking a leap of faith. The courage involved. Showing the difference between those that will take a chance in life, and those that won’t. The perfect dive, is like getting life perfect; really hard, almost impossible. It can also resemble falling. That’s easier to do!”

Which is all true, and from where I sit watching the preparations for 2012 it genuinely adds to the way we think about our competitors with their multiplicity of backgrounds and hundreds of different stories. This is, if you like, a fictional counterpart to the Olympic Dreams series that’s following the real life stories – and it’s surprisingly easy to imagine Lindsey in either programme.

Now, I should add a couple of notes. First that I’m not an expert in diving – so I’ll leave it to those who are to judge the authenticity of what they see in “Dive” around training and technique. And second – this is not a brazen bit of promoting the wares of the London 2012 project team. We work mainly on the core sport, news and culture initiatives for 2012 – and two years out these films are business-as-usual commissions for BBC Two and BBC Drama with production by ITV Studios.

But what they do show is the way that London 2012 can be a theme for drama and the arts in general – in a way that doesn’t force the audience into categories of “sports lover” or “sport-avoiding drama fan”. This is simply a human story which reflects the biggest event this country will stage, and it gives hope that sport and drama might produce some attractive offspring after all.

Dive starts on Thursday 8 July at 2100 BST, concludes the following day at the same time and is available afterwards on iPlayer.

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I got the first glimpse of what daily life will be like for the 10,000 competitors at the 2012 Olympics the other day. Well, where athletes will sleep and relax at least.

2012 have set up a show apartment in the athletes village and I joined the International Olympic Committee on a tour.

It didn’t take long. An estate agent would call the three-bedroom flats “cosy”. I’d call them compact.

Three bedrooms for six athletes, two small bathrooms and a small living room. Probably okay for a few weeks for six female Australian gymnasts but space will be tight for a handful of Bulgarian shot-putters.

But what really matters is that the village is at the heart of the Olympic Park which is rare for the Games. That means many competitors will be just a couple of minute’s ride away from the venues, rather than a coach trip across the city.

During the bid, 2012 published sketches of athletes standing at their bedroom windows with a view of the main stadium. Some of the flats will have that but the reality is that most will look over the new Westfield shopping centre and its car park, hardly the most inspiring of views.

When the Games are over, these flats will be turned into 2,800 homes for Londoners, nearly half of them “affordable” homes.

Would l live there? Well, they should be plenty of green space in the Park when the Games are over so the views will be better. I also think these appartment blocks will be perfect for people heading into retirement.

You’ve got a major shopping centre over the road, a swimming pool nearby and a huge park to walk in every day. When you are heading towards 70 or 80 and maybe worry about driving a car, you’d have everything on your doorstep and still be within a short distance of central London by public transport.

These flats won’t be on the market unil late 2011 and people will not be able to move in until 2014 when the Park and the blocks have been redesigned.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company has a huge challenge in making the whole environment an attractive place to live after the Games.

Please take a look at my report and tell me what you think.

With 14 meetings over the summer months in three continents, the Diamond League replaced the Golden League this season, with the aim of bringing the best of the best together to wow fans.

At the concept launch last November in Monaco, IAAF President Lamine Diack promised “world-class sport and entertainment” with a determination too see greater frequency of competition between the big names.

So has the new Diamond League lived up to its grand billing so far?

Veronica Campbell-Brown wins the 100m in Eugene

Will the Aviva British Grand Prix in Gateshead be any different from previous years, before it was part of a series, or is it the same meeting with a new name?

After enjoying it so much last year, I worked again last weekend at the Nike Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, the sixth stop on the Diamond League tour.

Considering how inconvenient it is to get to Eugene on the north-west coast of the United States, it is testament to the meeting that is always attracts big names and – for the 15th year in row – a sell-out crowd of 12,000, but this year was deemed the best ever.

Chatting to the athletes over the weekend I had to ask them whether the Diamond League was any different. The general vibe was positive and that yes, it was different this year.

For a start, there are more head-to-head match-ups, something that all the athletes I spoke to were relishing. It isn’t just about accumulating those Diamond League points to win the cash prizes and Diamond Trophy at the end of the season.

It is about the psychological advantages, the stamping of authority over your main rivals more often, as well as giving fans the races they all want to see more often.

There are 32 events in which you can score points, with each taking place at seven of the 14 meetings. The only event that has all 32 is the only two-day meeting, at London’s Crystal Palace on 13 and 14 August.

Clearly the word “diamond” in the title is making a difference to some athletes. The Prefontaine meeting director’s face was a picture when he heard that one of the African athletes had flown into Portland and got a taxi to Eugene – a 110-mile trip taking two hours!

I feel this 14-meet concept is working well this year as there are no global championships for many, so athletes who want to get performances on the board and cash in their pockets will have to take part.

It will be interesting to see if the starting line-ups are so loaded next year as the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea approach.

Walter Dix beats Tyson Gay in the 200m in Eugene

Olympic 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser was generally very excited about meeting her main rivals regularly in the sprints, but world champion Christian Cantwell reminded me that – unlike the sprinters – shot-putters never avoided each other in the past, so it wasn’t much different for them!

There was just a special vibe around Eugene, as I feel there will be in Gateshead, about being a Diamond League meeting. It’s like a stamp of approval for meetings now, making them one of the chosen few.

But is it any different for the fans? For those who have watched the series so far on the BBC has there be a difference to you as a viewer?

Of course there are things the IAAF would like to make better and iron out. There were questions last weekend as to why the New York and Eugene meets were three weeks apart, making it difficult for athletes from around the world to stay on and do both in one trip.

Also, does the Diamond League threaten the future of other athletics meetings? Is there a fear that these may suffer if the big names are just doing the larger events?

Usain Bolt ran a 300m in Ostrava this season; will he and other big names continue to take part in anything other than the Diamond League meets? These other meetings are vital and need support.

Some meetings are no doubt better for the athletes, media and spectators than others. But overall it seems, six meetings into the first Diamond League season, it’s a thumbs-up from the athletes.

That is why, for me, when Gateshead flies the flag on Saturday to herald the arrival of the Diamond League in the UK, it will be a bit more special. And remember we are the only country that has two of them.

Watch the Diamond League meeting in Lausanne on Thursday on the BBC Red Button and online (UK only), then Saturday’s Aviva British Grand Prix from Gateshead from 1630-1930 BST on BBC Two, the BBC Sport website (UK users only) and BBC Radio 5 live.

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We keep hearing West Ham talking about moving into the Olympic Stadium and stories in the media about entertainment companies running the 2012 Park after the Games.

But let’s take a reality check: the company responsible for doing all the financial deals to make all of this happen is simply not being given the tools to do the job.

I have been talking to Baroness Ford, the head of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, which was set up more than a year ago.

I’ve known her for some time now. She’s an experienced and tough businesswoman who rescued the Dome from financial disaster and has huge amounts of energy and enthusiasm for her Olympic role.

But when I talked to her this week, she was just angry and frustrated about the future of the Olympic Park.

The problem is that the last Government promised to hand over ownership of the Olympic Park to the OPLC, debt-free, so that it could do the financial deals to sell or rent out the venues to the private sector after 2012.

It’s a pretty fundamental action to take. Would you be able to sell your house if you didn’t have ownership of it or possess the deeds? No chance.

But the new coalition Government has now put that decision on ice, while the Treasury reviews financial decisions taken by Labour.

So the OPLC is trying to negotiate with companies about taking over the Park but it’s unable to tell them that it has ownership of it.

The danger is that many of these companies will walk away because of all these complications. There are plenty of other projects to invest in in London at the moment and they are cheaper because of the recession.

Ford believes the problem has to be solved by the end of the this month when parliament goes on holiday. She fears, if it’s not sorted out by then, it may never get sorted out.

I get the feeling, that after spending a year working the market hard, she is running out of patience with all this.

She told me she wasn’t thinking of resigning but I wouldn’t be surprised to see her walk away from the project if she is not allowed to do it properly.

And who would blame her?

She’s been given the toughest job of all. Olympics in the past have been left with white elephants. Look at Athens 2004 which I have reported on before.

The experience from Athens is that you cannot wait until after the Games to do these financial deals. They need to be done in the next two years when the magic around the Games is there. Once the Games are over, it’s much harder.

Ford keeps telling the Government this but nobody seems to be listening at the moment.

The former London Mayor should have been in a relaxed mood. He’d been celebrating London’s dramatic victory in the vote for the 2012 Olympics until the early hours of the morning and had spent a relaxing day in the heat of Singapore, seven hours ahead of the UK.

Livingstone caught my eye as I was chatting and joking with Simon Clegg, the former chief executive of the British Olympic Association. The Mayor pulled Clegg aside and whispered something in his ear. It was only a few words but the former Army Major’s face went very serious and Livingstone walked off briskly towards the lifts.

Clegg turned to me and said simply: “There’s been an incident in London.”

Within an hour of that moment, the mood in the lobby of the hotel changed from the euphoria of London’s victory to despair.

Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell had been sitting with journalists having a cup of tea and talking about the celebratory helicopter ride which was being planned over the Olympic site when the bid team returned to London.

She was soon taken aside by her aides and was briefed about the reports coming back from London.

I raced up to my hotel room for half an hour to see what BBC World was reporting from London. It soon became clear that the city had been hit by coordinated bombings.

By the time I returned to the lobby, it was full of athletes and officials from the bid team, talking about their worries about London. Many simply couldn’t believe what was happening.

Just a few hours previously, they had been at a open-air party at a Singapore restaurant watching TV pictures of the wild celebrations at Waterloo Station and Trafalgar Square. There had been so much pride in the bid team in pulling off a victory which meant so much at home.

Britain had hardly had time to enjoy the historic moment when it was dealing with a disaster. Rarely in the history of London has such sadness followed on so quickly from such joy.

I spent the next hours reporting the reaction from Singapore for my former newspaper, the Evening Standard. All the stories I had filed about London’s celebrations for the early editions were ripped up and we started again with a newspaper with a completely different mood.

Then Livingstone returned to the lobby for the first time. He was immediately surrounded by scores of TV cameramen. The Mayor had been in his hotel room for several hours coordinating London’s response to the bombings by phone.

During a colourful career, the Labour politician has sometimes uttered the wrong words and got into trouble because of it. But on this desperate day, the Mayor produced the finest speech of his life.

Clearly shaking with a mixture of anger and nerves, he said: “I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

“That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith – it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.”

2012′s team headed back to a very different London to the one they had left. That day is often in the minds of officials as they prepare security for the Olympics.

Security has been the top priority of every Games since the terrorist attack on the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Despite 7/7, the Olympic world doesn’t worry about the Games taking place in London any more than it would, had Paris or New York been given the event.

Strict security has been part of the Games for decades now. London will be no different.

But the memory of those 24 hours in Singapore will be in the minds of all of us who experienced them for the rest of our lives.

Rachel Cawthorn is in the form of her life. The 21-year-old sprint canoeist, from Guildford, won two World Cup gold medals in Germany earlier in June.

And the sport’s leading British star, Olympic gold medallist Tim Brabants, says she has become “the one to beat” in the women’s events.

For now, though, she is feeding swans on the banks of the Thames, soaking up sun before throwing herself back into her training regime.

“But I could do with the race practice and the lead-up to 2012 is going to be exciting,” she continues, rethinking. “I wouldn’t want to miss out on that. It’s exciting, especially when you hear stuff on the news about people interested in tickets.

“That brings it closer to home but you think about all the stuff you have to do first, and realise you have to get on with it.”

Cawthorn’s team-mates say she is a “ball of fire” when the race is on, yet she appears quiet and unassuming on camera. And she has turned to an unlikely hobby as a means of winding down away from the water.

Meet sprint canoe star Rachel Cawthorn

“I’ve just taken up crochet,” she tells me. “I can do that in between racing – although not too much, because I get sore elbows if I do it too intensely.

“I’ve been trying to work out which hobbies you can do sitting down in between training sessions, which don’t take too much out of you. I’ve started to do a bit of painting as well.”

Cawthorn was at the last Olympics in Beijing, but as a spectator taking part in a Team GB programme to give up-and-coming athletes a taste of the Games.

Even now, it is only six years since she saw a school assembly about a talent identification scheme, looking for athletes with certain physical characteristics, and took her first steps towards becoming a top canoeist.

“I hadn’t even been on a canoe properly, I’d just done silly paddling on holiday. Then I remember we had an assembly about it – I was really excited and wanted to go for it, but I kept it secret, I was a bit superstitious. I didn’t even tell mum and she worked at the school.

“The first summer (after being picked) was really fun, we fell in all the time and were messing around on the river. There were a group of us, all really new to it. In the winter we picked it up, and it got more and more serious.

“My first senior year was my last year of school and I started going for it properly then. My A-levels probably suffered a bit, I was spending more time canoeing than at school.

“I started university at Royal Holloway studying biology, and managed six weeks before finding out about all the GB training camps. I was like, ‘Well, that’s not going to work’ – I was going to be away for months on end. So I pulled out of uni. Hopefully I’ll go back one day, but it didn’t fit in at the time.”

Biology’s loss is canoeing’s gain as Cawthorn, the International Canoe Federation’s “athlete of the month” for June, prepares for the 2010 European Championships in Spain this week, having won bronze over 500m at last year’s Euros.

The British women’s sprint team feels like a university squad. Leading medal prospect Cawthorn, who races in K1 (single kayak), plus her housemate Louisa Sawers, and Sawers’ K2 (double kayak) partner Jess Walker have a combined age of 63, in a sport where athletes in their forties can win medals.

“It’s an advantage for us,” argues Sawers. “It means we’ve got more time to develop and, come 2012, we’ll have had a couple more years to improve.”

“But having a lot of experience makes a big difference,” counters Walker, who came 17th in the K2 in Beijing alongside veteran Anna Hemmings. “Now we’re gaining experience and hopefully, by 2012, we’ll have enough.

“We can learn from Tim (Brabants) – we’re lucky to have him around, he can tell us what it’s like. And I went to Beijing so I’ve learnt and I definitely felt that not having experience made a big difference.

“Coming 17th was a massive disappointment for me even though going to Beijing wasn’t my goal, it just happened and fell into place that way. But if I don’t get a medal at 2012 it’ll be devastating. All of us have medals in mind.”

Sprint canoeing’s Olympic events have changed since Beijing. Brabants has lost his 500m event, where he won bronze in 2008, though he does have the chance to defend his 1,000m title. Cawthorn has the K1 500m and 200m to aim for at London 2012, and the 500m will be her focus at the Euros.

“I’m quite confident,” she says. “I’m just trying to improve each year leading up to the Games. There’s room for two more years of improvement.”

Brabants, a veteran of three Olympics, goes further. “It’s amazing watching Rachel’s determination once she gets on the water for racing,” he tells me.

“She looks really peaceful and nice off the water, but she’s got such grit and determination on it. She tries really hard and she’s being rewarded with results as well.

“I think she’s the one to beat, to be honest. Other athletes will be looking at her as a very strong contender to win the Europeans. It’s quite a strong field at the top of the women’s events, it’ll be tough, but I think she’s tough enough to cope with it.”

Sawers and Walker are impressed, too.

“Rachel is a lot different in a boat,” says Walker, who competed in K4 events (four women in one kayak) alongside Cawthorn last year. “In the boat, she becomes this big voice. She’ll always fight and I think we can learn from that.”

Sawers adds: “She’s got fight in her, she’s a little ball of fire in the water, and in training that fire is always going.”

“But,” concludes Walker, “it only comes out on the water. Where it should be.”

But I also identified a key moment as being the World Cup – and here, leaving aside a daft remark about how great it would be if England got past the quarter-finals, is what I said last December:

“For the BBC there’ll be much to learn about our audiences’ use of media. We know that video streaming on the internet is getting more and more popular – but quite how much we’ll only find out when England are in action at a time when people are in the office or on the move. Similarly with mobile. How we follow the biggest sporting moments in a digital world is shaping the services we offer in 2012.”

Well, now we know. Last week our colleagues in BBC Sport had an amazing week for digital media. There were six million different users of this website in one day on June 23rd – smashing all previous records. There were 1.5m users of audio and video; and when England were playing Slovenia there were 800,000 people connected to live streaming at the same time – beating a previous best for the BBC of 360,000. So something that was counted in the tens of thousands when I was Director of Sport for the 2006 World Cup is now nearing the million mark; and there can be no doubt that the digital revolution is underway.

But we should be clear that this isn’t an “either/or” – television and radio or online and mobile. It’s all these and more. As someone who enjoyed the heart-stopping England v Slovenia commentary on 5 Live, I know the continuing importance of radio services; and there were close to 20 million people watching England v Germany on BBC One on Sunday afternoon, with millions more in pubs and at Big Screens. I’ve always been clear that for London 2012 the mainstream high definition TV experience is key for success.

The BBC’s iPlayer has proved to be a great success

However, the vastly increased amount of digital content – and the much greater choice you have available – is making us debate some of what we offer. Among that is the role of traditional TV highlights, and with the conspicuous exception of Match Of The Day – which goes from strength to strength – we’ve witnessed a marked decline in the numbers of people coming to highlights shows. The reasons are obvious: more live programming means less need for viewing through scheduled highlights, but also there’s the massively greater availability of content that you can view at the time and in the place of your choice.

We know the great success of the BBC iPlayer, but demand is also high for the audio and video you can get to quickly on websites like BBC Sport and BBC News. At the time of writing this, I’m able to watch Andy Murray’s victory on Monday or Brazil beating Chile – and there are the sports bulletins across our 24-hour news services too if you want to catch the best bits of recent action.

So thinking about 2012 – our idea is that our services will offer more than ever before, but you’ll be in charge of the scheduling not us. With live action going from nine in the morning to close to midnight, and all the best of the day available on iPlayer and online and on regular BBC News programmes and the BBC News channel, is there a need for a traditional daily TV highlights programme at all? Somehow I don’t think we’ll lack the opportunity to see the greatest moments many, many times.

The 20th European Championships kick off in Barcelona on 27 July and results in the Aviva European Trials and UK Championships will play a large part in selection.

Some athletes clearly have their seats already booked – world champions Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu are bound for Spain whatever happens in England’s second city this weekend.

But many others will have to make an impression on head coach Charles Van Commenee, who puts a lot of faith in current form and performances under pressure at major events, rather than numbers and records set away from public scrutiny.

Qualifying is as complicated as ever, with A and B standards for each event, and rules that allow selectors to exercise discretion to make sure the best medal hopes will be in Barcelona.

However, the standards the athletes have to hit are the same as those for World Championships last year and similar to those for London 2012. Often in the past the bar for selection to the Euros – in effect an easier competition – has been lower.

I can see Van Commenee’s reasoning in setting tough criteria to act as an incentive but does it mean that some young prospects, who could feature in 2012, will miss the opportunity to gain experience at a major championships?

I was watching the action in Bergen, Norway last weekend for the European Team Championships and I believe we have athletes in form to do the business this weekend Birmingham, and to hit the predicted medal target set of 10-15 in Barcelona next month.

I used to love running in what was until recently known as the Europa Cup, a team event I once captained.

The pressure is on. You really don’t want to get fewer points than are predicted for you; you don’t want to be the one who is pointed at for letting the team down. It creates a pressure pretty similar to that for a major championships.

Coming second to Russia was a great performance by GB – better than expected for the weekend.

So who stood out?

Colin McCourt – a 25-year-old Scotsman who seems to have come from nowhere in the 1500m – Mo Farah, Martin Rooney and Dwain Chambers – who put in a sparkling run in the 100m – all shone.

Then there were those that stood out for the wrong reason. Steve Lewis failed to make a clearance in the pole vault, giving ammunition for those who believe the British record-holder struggles under pressure.

All the ups and downs really set up an exciting weekend in Birmingham

Can anyone beat Chambers in the 100m now he is back in sub-10 second form? I think not.

UK number one Andy Turner continues his impressive form in the 110m hurdles, where Will Sharman will be his biggest rival.

It remains to be seen which of our women’s 400m runners will even take part, as Olympic champion Christine Ohuruogu missed the trip to Bergen with a thigh problem.

I believe there was a bit of annoyance among some of the relay runners in Bergen that they were not allowed to take part in the individual events, which would have provided better preparation for this weekend.

Ennis stayed at home last weekend, choosing to train for the seven events she will contest in the European Champs heptathlon, rather than the three in which she is currently the leading Brit at the moment – hurdles, high jump and long jump.

She tackles four events over two days in Birmingham, including a head-to-head with the returning former Commonwealth and European medallist Jade Johnson in the long jump.

I want to see 800m runner Jenny Meadows – who missed Bergen with a sore Achilles – and triple jumper Idowu – who was second there and has been below his best so far this year – competing in the event which should always be an important part of an athlete’s season.

Becoming UK champion always filled me with pride but if you want to do that you have to stay fit and deliver when it really matters.

Who do you think will be the star in Birmingham? Who will be Barcelona-bound and who will miss out?

Watch the European Trials and UK Championships on Saturday and Sunday on BBC Two and the BBC Sport website (UK users only), with updates on BBC Radio 5 live.