During the first week of July in 2005 an event of global significance took place.

Singapore was the center of the global attention. In the Raffles City Centre Convention Centre - the naming of which bore the hallmarks of a British colonial past - the ordinary 117th Session on the IOC (International Olympic Committee) took place. The purpose of the IOC Ordinary Session was to undertake perhaps their most important recurring function. That function was to chose the location to host the 30th modern Summer Olympic Games.

To begin with, there had been 9 cities competing to stage the 2012 Olympic Games. On the 18th May 2004, these were reduced to 5 main candidates. Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig and Rio de Janeiro had been unable to persuade on technical ratings and were purged from the on-going process.

5 names were submitted to the final voting procedure. The cities chosen for the eventual ruling were London, Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris. Of these, Paris carried the burden of being the most .

So, the fateful day in 2005 eventually arrived and the IOC met in Singapore to exercise a decision that would carry with it tremendous monetary consequences.

The procedure. was simply. Each of 104 entitled IOC attendees would take part in a consecutively held number of secret ballots. After each vote, if no candidate city had garnered an absolute majority of the votes cast, the city with the fewest votes would abandon their bid and a following ballot be held.

After some nail-biting rounds of voting, the 3 leading challengers emerged from the five short-listed hopefuls. London, Madrid and Paris. Moscow had fallen at the first hurdle and New York was eliminated after the second ballot.

Regardless of the fact that Madrid and London had both polled greater votes than Paris in the first two ballots, the French capital was still believed by many as the most likely to collect the eventual prize. Due to the intricacies of the voting maneuvers of some IOC delegates, at the next to last voting stage, Madrid, which had lead the race at the 2nd ballot with 32 votes, was eliminated collecting just 31 votes. This left London opposing Paris in the concluding vote.

The widely held assumption of the press and professional soothsayers was that Paris "had it in the bag".

London's bid had previously been evaluated as having many positive elements in reports drawn up by the IOC in 2004 and 2005. However, the general opinion within the various IOC evaluation committees was that Paris held the advantage over its cross-channel opponent.

The past track record also appeared to be against Britain. Previous bids by Birmingham (1992) and twice by Manchester (1996 and 2000) had all failed rather dismally. Paris, on the other hand, had contended for the 1992 Summer Olympics and then again in 2008, when it came third behind hot favourite Beijing. The general hunch in the run up to the 117th IOC Session was that Paris was due a winning bid.

The eventual result is now history. Celebrations by the GB team within the Convention Centre were more than matched by fanatical cries of joy from a vast crowd viewing the proceedings live on vast screens assembled in Trafalgar Square, Central London. The spot of the home crowd was, possibly, inspired - the Battle of Trafalgar being possibly the most famous of British triumphs over their long time adversary.

So, London became the first city to have the privilege of hosting the modern Summer Olympic Games thrice, having had the privilege in the summer's of 1908 and 1948.

But, what will be the resulting financial burden to London and its taxpayers? Can the British capital do the trick the uncommon feat of holding a modern Olympics and seriously make a financial gain from it? Or, will a bequest of debt loiter long after the visual sportsmanly glories, that surely await us in late July and early August of 2012?

The reply to those worries will form part of history as well, long after the memory of 2012 has faded from memory, only to live on in the legends and media images to be viewed by as yet unborn generations.