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London 2012 is all about winning a medal. Not just any medal, the gold medal.

2012 has been an extraordinary year for our country. We cheered our Queen to the rafters with the Jubilee, showed the world what we're made of by staging the most spectacular Olympic and Paralympic Games ever and - let's not forget - punched way above our weight in the medals table.

The incentive of a medal at the biggest sporting arena in the world is what drives me. Before I hang my gloves, I want to win the Olympic medal, and my performance at London will decide my future in the sport.

If the Olympic Games ever served a true altruistic purpose, they have long since outlived it. Yeah, the pursuit of athletic excellence, sportsmanship and international goodwill is plenty noble. But the modern Olympics are at best a vehicle for agitprop; at worst, a scandal magnet.

The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us.

The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself.

Sport allows us to engage in dialogue and to build bridges, and it may even have the capacity to reshape international relations. The Olympic Games embody perfectly this universal mission.

Even if you've been involved in a World Cup, the Olympics is huge. Only the Games has the power to change communities.

If you're going to stay in the Olympics, you've got to be entertaining and get sponsorship.

No one pretends anymore that the Olympics are just about sports. It's routine to talk about what effect holding the Games in this or that capital will have on the host country's international reputation, how a nation's prestige can be raised by its medal count.