London Olympics: It's going to be the time of our lives

This time next week the first gold medal of the 2012 London Olympics will be hanging around the neck of a female - probably Chinese - rifle shooter. Her achievement will be the culmination of four years of single-minded dedication, focus and discipline. What we will witness, in the rifle range at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, is an expression of true excellence.

But, though that gold will hang light around her neck, she will not be the first world champion of these Games. She will already have been beaten to the starting blocks by a group of people whose commitment to their cause knows no boundary. Over these last couple of weeks these competitors have taken their discipline to new levels, breaking all previous records, demonstrating unheard-of determination and perseverance. Yes, as the Olympics finally arrive in our lives, of this there can be no question: when it comes to whinging we British are the undisputed, undeniable, untouchable title-holders.

We should congratulate ourselves on the perfectly timed delivery of an outstanding demonstration of endless grumbly moans. Nobody does it better. An incessant low-level rumble, it reached a crescendo on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday (Friday) when the People's Whinger, presenter Evan Davis, reduced himself to gibbering incoherence while interviewing the architect of the Games, Lord Coe. As close as you might come to the perfect articulation of spluttering indignation, Davis concluded his fearsome attempt on the world single-handed carping record by demanding to know if he would be able to wear his Nike trainers into the Olympic Park.

"Probably," said Coe, his tongue clearly hovering near his cheek.

"Probably?" hurrumphed Davis, as if the choice of which super-national brand he is entitled to favour were the single most important issue facing the nation. "Don't you actually know?"

To be fair to Davis, he was only reflecting his listeners' mood. Picking up the vibrations on the radio, in the newspapers and on that 140-character shredder of reputation, Twitter, we should prepare ourselves for national humiliation. The way we have been telling it, everything that could go wrong is about to go wrong with our hosting of the Games. We have outsourced the security operation to cack-handed, greedy incompetents, we have surrendered our civil liberties to the commercial interests of the sponsors and have allowed the entire road network of London o be thrown into jeopardy in order to accommodate the Ruritanian requirements of Olympic officials. Then there are the opportunistic leaders of the civil service unions who insist that - with the overwhelming backing of almost 11 per cent of their membership - they have a mandate to withdraw staffing from passport control on the very day the world is arriving in London.

And all that's before we even mention the weather, which can only be properly explained as God's way of telling us the Games should have been held in Paris after all.

Listening to the national conversation, it appears the biggest omni-shambles in modern history is set to drop on our heads. Don the steel helmets and head for the basement, folks, we are about to be subjected to a fortnight-long shower of national humiliation. A bombardment, don't forget, we all paid for one way and another.

Except it is not going to be like that. Let me make a prediction here: the London Games are going to be great. Probably the best staged: magnificently organised, beautifully coordinated, splendidly delivered. For the next couple of weeks they will showcase our wonderful capital like never before, projecting to the world an image of a city that happily marries history with modernity like no other. Pictures of runners and cyclists tearing past Buckingham Palace, of horse riders apparently leaping over Canary Wharf, of triathletes splashing across the Serpentine, of girls in bikinis playing ball on Horse Guards Parade, will induce city envy across the globe. Wouldn't it be great, people living in Chicago, Madrid and Paris will think, if we could be citizens of a place like that.

But more to the point, it is going to be even more glorious for those of us who actually live in this country, this wonderland. As Coe pointed out to Davis, Britain is about to host 26 world championships in 19 days, a confluence of distinction in our midst that will never be repeated in our lifetimes.

This is the thing about the Olympics: they are a celebration of the best. For most of us, our everyday lives are characterised by the greyness of compromise, concession and mediocrity. Especially if we are an executive at G4S. In the Olympics, only excellence suffices. And to be witness to that - even for a passing moment - is an inspiration.

There was a hint of that at the MEN Arena in Manchester this week. The US basketball team was in town, playing Team GB in a warm-up for the London competition; 17,000 spectators had rammed into the place to witness genius in action. And they were not disappointed. There were moments watching LeBron James and Kobe Bryant slam and dunk when you were obliged to blink in disbelief: there before your very eyes appeared to be evidence that man can indeed fly.

It won't just be on the basketball court, either. For a fortnight we are going to be confronted with superhumanity at every turn. In the weight-lifting hall we will see tiny Kazakh women lifting the equivalent of a car over their heads. In the O2 Arena we will see gymnasts put their legs into positions that will insist they are constructed entirely of rubber. On the rowing lake we will see men push their physicality to a point at which most of us would simply explode. Everywhere there will be incredible, inspiring tales of endeavour and achievement. There will be the Afghan woman runner who trained as a teenager in secret because the Taliban would have executed her had they known she had an urge to compete. There will be the American hurdler who survived a drive-by gang shooting in which he was machine-gunned in both legs. There will be the Korean archer who can hit the bullseye at 100 metres with unerring precision despite being blind. If that is not inspiring, then London, we have a problem.

Sure, these Olympics have not come cheap. But here's all you need to do to get your money's worth out of the forthcoming festival of excellence: engage with the Games. Allow yourself to be carried away by the exploits, immerse yourself in the stories, get wrapped up in the drama. And the rewards will be manifold, certainly worth a few delays on the Central line.

As for the worries, forget them. All this moaning, it is what Sir Matthew Pinsent - who knows a thing or two about the Games - describes as the Olympic Phoney War. He witnessed it in Sydney, Athens, Vancouver and Beijing: when there is no sport yet happening, the small media army decamping into a place have to find something to report. That is why readers of the German news magazine Der Spiegel were this week treated to a piece telling them that London and the Games were clearly not made for each other. There was not much evidence in the story, just a compilation of ifs and maybes. I suspect the writer - amazingly, not a Briton but a Dutchman - will discover that once the sport starts he will have something wonderful to seize the attention back from such broody pessimism.

Instead of anticipating shame, we can look forward to being hit by a wave of international kudos. I visited the Olympic Park last week and it is jaw-dropping in its scale and ambition. Spick, span, beautifully landscaped: those coming here from across the world will be sending back astonished dispatches at what transformation has been achieved. From derelict outpost to the centre of the universe in five years. As for the security shambles, even that may come to be seen as positive. Who better to welcome the world to London than members of our glorious Armed Forces? Personally, I found it rather nice having my credentials closely inspected by a cheery, polite British soldier last week. Particularly as her name was Laura.

Let the Games begin.