If we can organise the Olympics, why can't we get the basics right? | Matthew Taylor

When David Cameron and Boris Johnson boasted that the Olympic venues had been delivered on time and "on budget", international observers may have seen it as confirmation that the UK is good at big projects. As well as the successful Olympic preparation, this year has seen a hitch-free royal wedding and major global sporting competitions at Wimbledon, Silverstone and Royal St George's running as smoothly and profitably as usual.

It's not just events (which by their nature have to be delivered on time). The Channel Tunnel rail link, the renovation of St Pancras and the Jubilee Line extension show how we can get big projects right . Why then can't we summon up the mixture of political leadership and public support needed to modernise and maintain our basic infrastructure? We are building houses at about a third of the rate needed, our transport system is outdated, our sewers are crumbling, our waste management is poor and question marks hang over our ability to develop an energy infrastructure which can deliver both sustainability and security of supply.

What can explain this contrast and can anything be done about it? In the face of the intractability of infrastructure development, some use the excuse of national geography. But while being a small, crowded country makes some things more difficult (finding space for houses and train lines), it should make others (creating economies of scale) easier.

Of more relevance may be aspects of our national character. Whatever the human cost of violent revolution or a defeat in war, such events can help associate the central state with the idea of national mission and renewal. The evolutionary compromises of the British constitution bequeath our national leaders few such pretensions. On the upside, our system of government is among the most open and accountable in the world. On the downside, it leaves government and their civil service advisers lacking the legitimacy to forge ahead with projects which rely on a faith in the long term to offset short-term disruption and costs.

The consequences of our historical predisposition only to trust the state at times of national emergency (even then grudgingly) are reinforced by the adversarial winner-takes-all electoral system which we have recently voted to keep. The length of time in infrastructure projects between the pain of writing cheques and the pleasure of cutting ribbons means ministers have little incentive to make sacrifices today, the benefits of which will be enjoyed by a different government of the future.

But there is a deeper problem still with our democratic culture, one that affects our ability to update our creaking infrastructure but also many other policy areas, from the funding of social care to the allocation of school places. As the old, class-based political order declined from the 1960s on, it was replaced by the myth of democracy as consumerism. In line with a neo-liberal ideology which equated the private sector and markets with efficiency and virtue and the state and politicians with ineptitude, the notion that "the customer is always right" was translated into the focus group techniques of market research.

But the voter isn't always right. The opinions people express when first asked a question can change dramatically when they are furnished with a few basic facts. And most of us hold apparently contradictory positions. As Ben Page from Ipsos MORI says, the British people have a simple desire: "A Scandinavian welfare state on American taxes." There's nothing wrong with public debt if it is incurred by investing in the future. But the debt mountain threatening to engulf Europe and the USA is different. It is in large part the manifestation of the politicians being afraid to tell the more privileged that there is a limit to the number of times they can have their cake and eat it.

Going back to infrastructure, confused public opinion extends to localism where we simultaneously demand more affordable housing for our children while rejecting any being built where we live. The National Housing Federation reports that more than 200,000 houses have been removed from the planning system since the coalition's populist decision to scrap regional strategies. Without accepting, let alone addressing, the inherent tensions, ministers blithely promise to create a system which delivers on the commendable goals of accelerating growth within the current economy, laying the foundations for a radically different green economy of the future and handing power to neighbourhoods.

So what needs to change? In the face of poor policy-making and public cynicism, the debate about democratic reform tends to focus on institutions and processes but more important are the terms of public discourse. Genuinely good governance moves us beyond our innate human tendencies to self-interest and short-termism to identify a coherent idea of enlightened public interest.

History tells us democracies are better stewards of the environment and that the flipside of the grand plans of dictators are the destruction of communities, and disastrous follies which are only revealed years later. But as America divides over a budget deficit built up despite a failure to invest in infrastructure, it is far from clear that a gridlocked democracy is better suited to tomorrow's challenges than a technocratic autocracy.

In an open, querulous democracy such as ours, neither authoritarianism nor a return to deference is an option. Instead, we need a combination of new forms of public engagement and innovative policy-making. Citizens' juries may not be the best way to make detailed policy, but they can help build a consensus that action is necessary and that there are no pain- or controversy-free options. New forms of hypothecated and local taxation, charging and community investment can help to create incentives to act more in the long-term interest.

Ideas like these have been around for ages but our risk-averse, policy-making establishment still clings to the old ways. The citizens' juries Gordon Brown announced soon turned out to be a toothless listening exercise. The big society debate has seen lots of talk of new vehicles to encourage community investment in local infrastructure, but cash-strapped councils are sceptical and there is a chronic shortage of starter capital.

The Olympics show the public can get behind a major national project and that we have the management, engineering and construction skills we need. But from sewers to power stations, the infrastructure deficit continues to grow and today's problems pale by comparison to the challenges which could be posed by 21st-century resource shortages and climate change. There are no immovable deadlines or international competitions to force the state or private sector to invest for the future. The impetus will have to come from within our political system and at the moment that is severely in doubt. We may be good at organising sports events but we are still not winning the game of long-term leadership. Maybe it's time to consider new ways of playing.

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Britain's Lawrence Okoye tipped for gold medal in London 2012 Olympics

Britain's Lawrence Okoye, winner of the under 23 men's discus at the Aviva U23/U20 Championships, has been tipped for gold at the London 2012 Olympics. Photograph: Mark Shearman

Among a swarm of holidaymakers at Gatwick airport Lawrence Okoye is initially difficult to spot – until he stands up, all 6ft 6in of him, and stretches out two enormous muscular arms. A wave of heads instantly turn to gawp.

What those holidaymakers will not have realised, however, is that they were looking at a potential Olympic gold medallist, a young discus thrower the likes of which Britain has never before produced, so prodigiously talented that his coach, John Hillier, has earmarked him to win gold in 2012 and one day break the world record.

Those are huge statements for a 19-year-old who began training full-time last September. But his achievements in that short period are so staggering as to merit such predictions having already broken a senior British record, a world-age record, won an Under-23 European gold medal and with a throw of 67.63m earned himself a fourth-place ranking amid the world's best discus throwers this season.

On Sunday afternoon in Birmingham he will compete for his place on the British team that travels to the world championships in South Korea, which start at the end of August. Still, the Croydon thrower is level-headed enough to know not to get carried away.

"The first mistake people always make when they get a bit of success is to get over-excited," he says, matter of fact. "I've seen it before, a young sportsman doing incredibly well and then you don't hear from them again because fame gets to their head and they do things they shouldn't. I could go there on Sunday [the UK trials] and have a shocker and not go to the worlds so I've got to really stay on point and concentrate on what I'm doing. Although I've gone up very quickly, I could definitely come down very quickly as well."

Despite his young age Okoye has already witnessed how quickly sporting opportunities come and go in life. Regretting that he missed out on a promising rugby career with the very best clubs – although he was offered a professional contract at Esher – he is determined to grasp what he sees as a "second chance" to excel in throwing the discus.

"I joined the London Irish academy too late," says Okoye, who as a schoolboy was nicknamed Jonah Lomu. "I just didn't know. My mum's not from this country [she is Nigerian] so she didn't know the structure and system here. I know now what I should have done when I was 15 – try and get to an academy at a young age, but I joined at 18 and that's too late. I regret it in a sense, but I don't regret how things have turned out since."

His rugby playing friends were slightly bemused at his decision to switch to the discus – postponing an offer to study law at Oxford University along the way, and more recently declining an offer from Nebraska College, where his father played American football, for a track and field scholarship – but his remarkable achievements in the most ancient of Olympic sports speak for themselves and Okoye is now one to watch at London 2012.

While some teenagers may feel overawed at such an incredible trajectory of progress, Okoye takes it in his stride. "I never think you can't do something," he says, shrugging. "I've got that kind of delusional mentality, you think you can do everything, you think you're special. I heard Will Smith say that all successful people are slightly delusional. You've got to believe you can do things that maybe you can't do.

"No one's done what I've done. I'm a world record holder, I've thrown further than any teenager's ever done, I've broken the British record, I've won the European [Under23] champs. If I'd told someone I was going to do that last year I don't think they would have believed it. But that's what life's all about, shocking people and doing things that are out of the ordinary. Hopefully I'll keep doing that."

Despite his success, Okoye is acutely aware of his need to gain consistency and a better technical understanding of his event. He describes his gift like a magic touch. "I know it's in my back pocket but I don't really know how to reach for it. Sometimes I can get it out, sometimes it will fall out, but I don't always know what's coming. When I'm able to produce good throws on a week-to-week basis that's when things will really start to feel like they are going well."

Perhaps his biggest achievement to date has been to have invigorated a discipline that for so many years in this country has been wholly overlooked. Great Britain has never won a global or Olympic medal in the discus, and the event is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media. But on Sunday that is all about to change. Okoye has sparked a revolution in the discus – with three other Britons throwing personal bests this summer to post the A-qualifying standard for the world championships – promising a gripping contest at the UK trials as four throwers compete for three places.

His fellow throwers have certainly embraced their new star. Okoye is not just successful, image-wise he is everything the event has been lacking – fit, lean, highly intelligent and young with a Mohawk hairstyle – he is a marketing man's dream. But instead of swooning at these facts, Okoye is modest, stating only that he cares for the event and is determined to raise its profile. "For years British throwing has been very poor. Now it will get on the map. Everyone's been behind me, they want me to do well. They're just happy that a light's been shined on their sport. I want to bring change, it's inspirational for other people and that's what it's all about. I want people to care about discus throwing.

"I didn't know anything about javelin when I was growing up, but I knew Steve Backley. When someone does well you're interested in the sport. It won't just be me, though, Brett Morse is also up there in the world rankings and he's 22. Two British throwers up there, it's unheard of, I'm pleased with where the sport's going."

So how does Okoye explain his aptitude for throwing? Is it a natural skill that he has always somehow inherently possessed? He shakes his head and leans forward intently. "It's not a natural thing at all," he says, emphasising each word. "It's something you're taught, not something you do. It's a very, very technical sport, people underestimate that."

Despite having taken part in the odd schools competition, outside of the rugby season, Okoye says he has had very little experience in perfecting the discipline. "It takes lots and lots of lots of throws in the circle. Right now that's what I'm lacking to be really good. More practise, more training."

It is here that Okoye's scholarly vein becomes apparent as he talks about "studying" the discus. "In the past I wouldn't have been able to name a discus thrower or tell you the world record, but I could tell you every discus thrower in the world now. I've done lots of research and homework. I go on YouTube and spend hours watching throwers, analysing their technique."

The immediate future brings a chance to win a British medal in the discus at the world championships. But Okoye is taking it one throw at a time. "Of course I'd like to get a medal but I'm not going there with that in my head. People have had the world at their feet and then it's all crumbled. I want to go a long way in this sport and surprise a few people."

Okoye will compete at the Aviva London Grand Prix on Friday and Saturday at Crystal Palace. Final few tickets for Friday on sale at uka.org.uk/aviva-series or freephone 08000 556 056

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Olympics Aquatic Centre – review

The London 2012 Aquatics Centre, designed by Zaha Hadid: ‘a space that can only be described as stonking’. Photograph: David Poultney

From the outside, it's a car crash. Or a UFO crash. Or, to use the watery metaphors that are de rigueur when talking about Zaha Hadid's ?269m Aquatic Centre, it is like a vast turtle waving over-sized flippers. A great roof, whose beauty should come from the way its great weight came down to the ground at three points is engulfed with even bigger temporary structures, blown-up, go-faster versions of what might be seen at a county cattle fair, needed to house the 15,000 temporary seats for the Olympic Games. They will be taken away afterwards, leaving a 2,500 capacity, which is the most that any non-Olympic swimming event is likely to attract.

Then, once spectators have negotiated the crowd management arrangements, which the building accommodates somewhat clumsily, they will enter a space that can only be described as stonking, a room big enough for more than 17,500 people. It is impressive because it is big, and purposeful, and will contain large crowds, but also because the architecture rises to the occasion. The architects' moves are confident and equal to the scale of the place. They don't fumble or tinker. More than that, the interior has a feeling of wholeness. It feels moulded or carved, not assembled. It looks like a body more than something constructed out of pieces.

The big thing is the roof, steel-framed and timber-clad, which floats and undulates, but is also palpably substantial. Officially, it's like a wave, but, with its combination of weight and agility, it's very like a whale. At either end a concrete bowl, containing the pools, the permanent seating and support spaces, rises to meet the roof where it descends. Along each side, in the gaps formed between the bowl and the roof, huge glass walls will be installed after the games, opening the space to the sky and the surrounding park. Now these gaps open to steep banks of temporary seats, contained within the great flippers that are so problematic on the outside. Inside, they are continuous with the rest of the space, and add to its drama.

The work focuses on the two pools, for swimming and diving, coming down to a few human bodies in water, small and fragile relative to the whole, a shift in scale that is somehow achieved smoothly. The diving platforms are moulded out of the same concrete as the rest of the lower structure, making them extensions of the architecture rather than additional pieces of concrete.

Another pool, for practice, would be part of the experience too, visible behind a wide glass wall, but International Olympic Committee (IOC) regulations have required an unfortunate temporary partition. It's something to do with keeping athletes and officials apart, which is clearly very important, but it blocks the view. Elsewhere the interplay of architectural and sporting demands is happier. The greys of the structure are offset by strong primary colours: the blue pools, the yellow and red of the lane markers, and an interesting pinkish light filtered from the outside through translucent walls in the temporary extensions.

The Aquatic Centre is the London Olympics' most majestic space: the most potent, the most charged. It is also 2012's most difficult child, the first venue to be designed, the last to be finished. It was accompanied along the way by stories of escalating budgets (nervous builders, and near abandonment of the design). Built, it has compromises, like the view-blocking partition and the flippers, about which Hadid does not even try to pretend to be happy. As originally conceived, the awkward temporary extensions would not have been there, as there was to be a roof big enough to cover both temporary and permanent, but this proved too extravagant.

The obvious comparison is with the ?93m, 6,000-seat Velodrome, another wavy-roofed work completed last February, seemingly with the smooth precision of a high-performance bike. The Velodrome's roof required 300 tonnes of steel; the Aquatic Centre's – about the same size but with admittedly more difficult conditions – uses 3,000 tonnes. The Velodrome, trim and taut, is also a handsome building, and promises to be a powerful venue.

Part of the complication comes from the fact that the centre was designed before London won the bid. London was in danger of being seen as the safe-but-boring option, with dull buildings, and Hadid's design could be waved in front of the IOC as evidence of stardust. The problem was that the people who would eventually be the clients for the building, the organisations set up after London won the bid, didn't exist then, and the brief was not as developed as it would be later. When designs come first and clients second, there is often trouble.

But there may also be a mismatch between the processes of something like the Olympics and architecture as conceived by Hadid. Architecture, for her, is something that should make its presence felt, intervene, change things, perhaps get in the way. Her style seems to be about dynamism and weightless modernity, but her buildings are actually massive. They are slow, not fast. They reflect an old idea, common to Palladio and Le Corbusier, that architects sculpt and shape and compose. Hence her roof, which dips down in the middle to suggest two different spaces within in the overall enclosure, one for swimming and the other for diving.

What London 2012 wants is a great whirring delivery machine, driven by the inexorability of the project's deadline, where as many details as possible are determined in advance by specifications and regulations. They want architects to slip into the machine noiselessly, if possible with a bit of elegance, like Hopkins Architects at the Velodrome. With Hadid there is more of a grinding and crashing of gears, but she set out to achieve "a really great spatial experience", and did so.

I am sure that the Aquatic Centre could have been built more cheaply and easily, and without its crashes of permanent and temporary. It is a building that will be at its best after the games, when the flippers have been replaced by the great glass walls, although it will then face a new risk of being too grand for a public pool. The wavy roof risks being too small for the Olympics and too big for its afterlife. It can only be hoped that, whatever plans are made for its future upkeep, they are equal to the ambitions of the structure.

But, given that the whole ?9bn Olympic extravaganza spends money that could have had more prudent and practical uses, it does not seem so terrible that a small fraction of its extravagance should go on a space as magnificent as this. Many hundreds of millions will be flushed away on more boring things, such as consultants' fees and security that may or may not be necessary.

Lastly, a note to the IOC. While the Centre offers 17,500 seats for watching swimming, only 10,000 will be able to watch diving events. This is in accordance with IOC specifications, which seem to assume that people find diving a bit boring. Evidently, the specification writers haven't heard of Tom Daley.

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Is it fair for 'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius to run in London Olympics?

South Africa's Oscar Pistorius competes in the 400 metres on May 31, 2011 at the Zlata Tretra (Golden Spike) athletics meeting in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images

Oscar Pistorius rose slowly from the starting blocks, like a middle-aged man with a dodgy back getting out of an armchair. As the athletes rounded the first bend in the 400m event at Lignano in Italy earlier this month, he was last. But down the back straight his powerful arms began to pump, his legs appeared to slice through the air and he maintained his speed through the final bend. Now he was leading the race and bombing down the finishing straight. He crossed the line and sneaked a look at the clock – 45.04 seconds, eventually rounded up to 45.07 – before bear-hugging one of the other runners and falling to the track laughing.

Pistorius, 24, who is South African, had not broken the world record – he was almost two seconds off Michael Johnson's 1999 mark – but he achieved something almost as significant on that balmy evening of 19 July. He had passed the qualifying standard that will allow him, if selected by his country, to race alongside the best able-bodied athletes at next month's world championships and at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. And he didn't just scrape through. If he had run that time in the 400m final in Beijing in 2008, he would have finished fifth; he would have done even better at the 2009 world championships, placing fourth.

It had been coming, but no one expected it so soon. In January 2008, the International Association of Athletics Federations deemed that Pistorius – who was born without either fibula, the bone that runs from behind the knee to the ankle, and whose legs were amputated mid-calf when he was 11 months old – was ineligible to compete in its events, notably the Olympics. The concern was that his carbon-fibre prosthetics gave him a competitive advantage: made by the Icelandic company Ossur, the Flex-Foot Cheetah weighs approximately half of a typical sprinter's lower leg.

Pistorius appealed, more professors and biomechanists were engaged, and in May 2008 the Swiss-based court of arbitration for sport overturned the decision. The "Blade Runner" (alias "the fastest man on no legs") was free to compete in the Olympics after all. The only problem was that Pistorius was running mid-47 seconds for the 400m, a significant chunk of daylight behind the world's best. He consoled himself by winning three golds at the Paralympics (100m, 200m and 400m), all in record time.

So while Pistorius was rolling around deliriously on a track in Italy, everyone else had a couple of minutes to make up their minds on one of the most intractable ethical conundrums in recent sporting history. The reliably erudite Roger Black, our greatest 400m runner, was one of the first to speak out. No scientific consensus, he pointed out, had been reached on whether the blades provided Pistorius with a benefit and until that was clear we did not have the faintest idea whether he was "an amazing athlete or a very good athlete with an advantage". Black also placed himself in the spikes of an athlete beaten – maybe even to a medal – by Pistorius. Would they think, perhaps even justifiably, that it was unfair?

There was concern, too, from the Paralympic community. Pistorius has always contended that he would like to compete at both the Olympics and the Paralympics, but some viewed the actions of the world's most famous disabled athlete as a defection. Tanni Grey-Thompson, who won 11 gold medals at five Paralympics, had already made her position clear. "I just don't think it is about whether he has an advantage or disadvantage; he's just too different," she said. "I can see why he wants to go to the Olympics, for the competition, fame and the money, but I'd like to see him get that at the Paralympics and I think London will be able to deliver that."

I put Black's concern to Great Britain's current king of the quarter-mile, Martyn Rooney, who finished sixth in the 400m final in Beijing. How would he feel if he were beaten by Pistorius in London? "I wouldn't be too bothered," he says. "I'd be a lot angrier if, say, someone who had failed a drugs test beat me. Oscar has not gone out of his way to cheat. This is his situation: he needs to run with those blades. He can modify things in ways that we can't, but there's things we can do that he can't, so it balances out quite well. The athletes who complain are the ones who aren't running fast enough."

Ade Adepitan, who competed in wheelchair basketball and now presents Channel 4's That Paralympic Show, has more conflicted views, but feels that Pistorius could be a radical role model for disabled athletes. "If he gets into the final it's going to send shock waves round the world, and if he wins a medal, wow," he says, with a mischievous laugh. "Picture a double-leg amputee on the podium at the Olympics. What doors would it open up? What implications does it have? None of us will know until it happens, but that's the great thing about what Oscar is doing: he's asking questions."

What everyone does agree on is that you would be hard pushed to find a nicer guy or better ambassador for his sport. Pistorius is known for telling children that his legs were bitten off by a big shark, or that they fell off because he didn't eat his greens – depending on whether their parents are around – and he believes it is his responsibility to educate people positively about disability. He is heavily involved in the Mineseeker Foundation, which supplies prosthetic limbs to the victims of landmines in Mozambique.

Pistorius was born in 1986 in Johannesburg to Sheila and Henke, who works in dolomite mining. After the amputation, Oscar was given a set of fibreglass legs and within six months he was taking his first faltering steps. He was a natural sportsman, playing rugby, tennis and water polo to a high level, but life away from games was less happy. His parents split when he was six and, when he was 15, his mother, to whom he was particularly close, died. He only started running in 2004, aged 17, but within a few months, using a set of prosthetics from Ossur, he was narrowly defeated in the 100m and won the 200m at the Athens Paralympics.

His progress has never been exactly straightforward though. There remains considerable scientific doubt over whether his crescent-shaped legs give him an unfair advantage; one report, in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2009, claimed that the Cheetahs might provide him with as much as a 10-second boost over 400m. The legs have also caused him to be detained and handcuffed at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam in 2008, when police suspected him of being a terrorist. Worst of all, he was involved in a boat accident on the Vaal river in South Africa in 2009 that left him with a broken jaw, crushed cheekbone and 170 stitches patching his face together.

It was this last incident, however, that may be responsible for Pistorius's recent dramatic upturn in form. Having been convinced he was going to die, he now decided to lose weight, spend less time on his Yamaha superbike and not be "that crazy kid I was when I was growing up" (though he has kept the pair of pet white tigers named after underworld gods). He focused more than ever on his preparation. "I train harder than other guys, eat better, sleep better and wake up thinking about athletics," he has said. "That's probably why I'm a bit of an exception."

Rooney, who has raced and beaten Pistorius twice, most recently this month, agrees that there has been a dramatic change. "I was taking the mick out of him the other day. A picture came up on his computer from Beijing and I said, 'You were a fat git back then'," Rooney says. "He was a big lad, he didn't look like an athlete and that's when people got annoyed with the blades because they just saw this fat guy who was running fast. But now he's lean, he's built like an athlete. He's come a long way and he's coming to his peak."

Last week a billboard went up in Times Square, New York. It is for a new fragrance called A*Men from Thierry Mugler and shows a kind of Robo-Pistorius, his blades cast in chrome, looking like a superhero running to answer an emergency call – obviously someone needs a quick slap of aftershave, fast. The tagline reads: "A modern hero, an exceptional athlete."

It is hard to argue with either of those statements. Whatever you think about the ethics of Pistorius racing against able-bodied athletes, it sends out a stunning message of hope for people with disabilities.

"If you asked any sporting expert 15 years ago if Paralympians would be competing against Olympians, they would have laughed you out of the room," says Adepitan. "Oscar is inspiring amputees all over the world to say: 'Look, you can compete on an even level with anyone if you work hard enough.' And, for any sports fan, it's something you would want to see."

Blind from birth, the US swimmer is the most decorated Paralympic athlete, with 55 medals, 41 of which are gold.

Britain's most successful female Paralympian has won 16 medals from five Paralympics, including 11 golds.

Started swimming as therapy in 1971 and by 1976 was at the Toronto Paralympics, winning three gold medals. Won another 13 golds, making him UK's most successful Paralympic athlete.

Swedish shooter won 16th gold in Beijing. Currently competing for a quota place in London 2012 Olympics.

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