With exactly a month to go until the opening ceremony of a London Games that will be his last as International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge is in relaxed mood. But then it is hard to tell when the gnomic Belgian is not.
Amid all the UK scrutiny of the £9.3bn budget, the security fears, the danger of transport meltdown, the sponsors and the Games lanes, it is easy to forget that for Rogge and the IOC the preparations for London 2012 have been pretty stress‑free.
There has been none of the last‑minute construction panic of Athens or the human-rights protests ahead of Beijing. Rogge, the former Olympic sailor who has been a calm hand on the tiller of the Lausanne-based organisation since his 2001 appointment, is effusive in his praise for Lord Coe's organising committee.
On recent inspection visits to London, the IOC and Locog have been in lockstep. The IOC needs the London Games to be a success, not only to prove that hosting them is a risk worth taking but to show that all the promises around legacy, around a "compact Games", around putting athletes first, were more than just rhetoric.
"Organising the Games is always a difficult logistical challenge and you can have unforeseen circumstances to which you have to adapt. They are in budget and some of the contingency will remain, which is a good thing. And we have seen a lot of creativity. They know sport, they love sport and they have this added layer of creativity on top," says Rogge, who will stand down as president in September 2013. He is amused to note that Danny Boyle plans to bring village cricketers to the Olympic opening ceremony in his "green and pleasant" opening tableaux, and enthuses about the public reaction to the torch relay.
So confident is Rogge that his only concern is the same topic that will obsess much of the country for the next month. "Every drop of rain that falls now is good news," he says, in the hope of getting the worst of the British summer out of the way before 27 July.
Rogge identifies three factors that he believes will turn a good Games into a great Games. "Good organisation with good weather, the performance of the home team and gold medals up front." As such, he says, he will be cheering Mark Cavendish down the Mall – assuming he is not being challenged by a Belgian cyclist. "The Canadians waited five days to get their first gold medal in Vancouver and then you get a sea change. People went to the streets, partying, having fun."
The final key ingredient, says Rogge, is iconic performances by iconic athletes – in other words, Usain Bolt needs to be on top of his game.
Not everyone is yet sold on the vision for London's Games, however. There are those who find the £9.3bn taxpayer‑funded budget unpalatable in austere times and there are those who believe the modern Games is a heavily branded corporate monster, devouring a city in which it is staged before moving on to the next.
It is a charge that Rogge is well used to defending. "We are often interrogated about the fact the Games should be commercialism free and shouldn't be sponsored. I always argue that would take us back to the unfair and elitist atmosphere of the Olympic Games before the 1960s," says Rogge.
"There was no sponsorship, no TV rights. The result was that only the rich countries could send athletes, developing countries did not send one athlete."
Rogge, once a keen rugby player who also became a big cricket fan after spending time with relatives in Cornwall in his youth, says the explosion in value of sponsorship and broadcasting rights has been used towards the staging of the Games (a third of Locog's £2bn privately raised budget comes from the IOC) and underpinning the global groth of the Olympic movement.With weary resignation, he admits that the Olympics have become a lightning rod for protest. "We are supposed to cure all the ills of society and the world, every problem. We've been addressed for many, many problems – animal rights, social rights," he says. "People say the IOC has to take a position on everything. We are a sports organisation. We are not autonomous from society, we are part of society. We reflect society, the good points and the bad points."
Another spectre that has haunted successive Games has been thrust back into the spotlight. The court of arbitration for sport verdicts against IOC and British Olympic Association rules that provided for an "additional sanction" for drug cheats, but were incompatible with the global anti‑doping code, mean that the spotlight will be on the likes of LaShawn Merritt and Dwain Chambers.
"If I cross paths with Dwain Chambers and he wants to shake hands, I will shake hands and wish him well. You have to treat him normally, that's the rule of law," says Rogge, who is hopeful that the new 2013 Wada code will reintroduce the ability to ban athletes for two years plus the following Olympic Games.
On another contentious issue, he is also confident that Saudi Arabia will become the final country to ensure gender equality and send male and female athletes to the Games. There are believed to be two women in line for places, with the IOC awaiting confirmation of their nomination from the National Olympic Committee.
"We believe if there is a woman participating that will be a big symbolic event. You can't expect a country to change overnight its cultural, social, political fabric. Whether we like it or not, this is a fact of life. It will take time, but this is the first step," says Rogge.
London was also supposed to provide a template for reducing the cost of staging the Games, but the public cost has still risen to £9.3bn. Rome's decision to pull out of the race to host the 2020 Games raised fears that it would be increasingly difficult to find cities prepared to take the gamble. Rogge disagrees, insisting the three contenders for 2020 - Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo - are strong ones, after the IOC decided Baku and Doha should not make the shortlist.
"We made good progress. The first thing I did in 2002 after my election was to put a cap on the number of athletes and to put a cap on the number of sports. We took more than 100 different measures to reduce the cost of the Games. This has resulted in a positive result in the worst economic crisis since 1930. We still had six countries reduced to five after Rome pulled out. And we still had five countries that we reduced to three with the shortlist. If you look at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, you have six candidate cities [including Glasgow]. Already I hear for 2022, that Oslo is a candidate, that Switzerland will have a candidate, that the Americans are considering. Overall, the size of the Games is OK," he says. Baku and Doha were simply "not ready", he says. The 70-year-old has built his reputation on being an anti-Sepp Blatter, cleaning up the IOC's reputation in the wake of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal and attempting to guard against excessive expansion – putting a cap on the number of athletes (10,500) and sports (26) included in the Games.
That reputation, however, has come under renewed threat amid allegations that for some confirm existing prejudices about the closeted world of the global sporting "blazerati". Though keen to emphasise that the national Olympic committees from 54 countries implicated in selling tickets on the black market are technically independent of the IOC, Rogge recognises that is not a distinction the public will make.
He says he cannot prejudge the outcome of the IOC's ethics commission but is "determined the affair will not be swept under the carpet" and insists "those found guilty will be heavily punished".
Regardless, he is sure that once the Olympic circus has left London the doubters will be convinced, pointing to research conducted either side of the 2008 Beijing Games.
"The difference between appreciation before and after was unbelievable. The people who have seen the Games say: 'This is valuable.' The ones who are against it in the UK will definitely change after the Games. There is no doubt about that."
Rogge is equally upbeat on the controversial legacy commitments made by London to secure the Games. He says there is already a regeneration legacy, even before the opening ceremony, and is "very optimistic" there will be a legacy for sports participation too – despite serious doubts over the ability of an Olympics to inspire people off their sofa and into the pool.
"You need a lot of things to have sports participation. You need the responsibility of parents, there is no kid that will go alone to a sports club at 10 or 11. You need a good sports policy from the public authorities and, for me, you also need another approach to sport from the sports clubs," he says. "They need to compete against the internet, against computer games, against Facebook and Twitter. They have to attract and retain people. But the Games are definitely a big boost to that. There will be a good legacy in terms of youth sport, the awakening of interest among young people."
As for his own legacy, Rogge usually refuses to engage in the question. But contemplating the end of his tenure, he appears minded to muse on his contribution.
"I will be happy if after London the athletes who have participated in the Olympic Games on my watch will say: 'These were good Games.' This is our core business. I think young athletes will in future be happy with the Youth Olympic Games and I think they will be very important for the development of the Olympics. I hope the athletes will say he did a good job in the fighting against doping and match fixing, because this is becoming a major threat," he says.
"I hope my colleagues in international federations, NOCs and organising committees will be able to say we raised good revenues that were distributed to them. We have also invested a lot in terms of general development. We have built a network of centres in Africa, a Sport for Hope organisation. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling: 'If you are a tired president, my son.'"