By Keith Beattie

On Sunday 14 July 1912, the name of Kennedy Kane McArthur became part of Olympic history when he triumphed in the marathon at Stockholm, Sweden. However, nowhere was McArthur’s victory celebrated with more pride than in his birthplace, the village of Dervock in Co. Antrim.

One hundred years later, the success of K.K. McArthur will be remembered in a festival of culture and sport organised by Ballymoney Borough Council, Dervock and District Community Association and Springwell Running Club. Celebrations will include an exhibition, a play about McArthur’s life and a Festival of Running.

By Simon Rodway

When London won the bid in 2005 to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Blue Badge Tourist Guides saw this as a fantastic opportunity not only to help transform east London, site of the Olympic Park and one of the most deprived areas of the country, into a major tourist site, but also to raise the profile of the Blue Badge, the UK's professional tourist guiding qualification.

So we set up a committee to co-ordinate our efforts ­ called, very catchily, the Blue Badge 2012 Committee. This was important as we are all technically self-employed competitors, but to try and tackle something as huge as the Olympics as individual guides would be to miss an opportunity. Sure, charge the hill, but let's all do it together.

By Phil Cope 

We hear a great deal these days about the people of the UK’s supposed apathy towards the forthcoming London Games. While, at a time of severe austerity, the huge costs are, inevitably, questioned, the appetite here in Wales for these grand festivals of sport and the inspiring stories they reveal is surprisingly high.

When I accepted the commission to co-ordinate a major new project to celebrate Wales’ sportsmen and women at the Olympic and Paralympic Games as part of the London Cultural Olympiad, my brief was to produce just one main and one community exhibition to tour Wales, to publish a new book and to devise and deliver a workshop programme for children.

By Kevin Moore 

The new National Football Museum will open in Manchester next year and everyone who works for the Museum is of course very excited about this fantastic opportunity.

Preston had provided a home for the Museum since 2001 (our collections stores and research facilities will continue there), but thanks to funding from Manchester City Council and the European Regional Development Fund we will now be able to showcase our outstanding collections to a much wider audience, within a space that is more than twice as big as the Preston site.

By Dave Pendleton 

In the public mind football club museums are associated with the likes of Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea. Crammed with gleaming trophies, these are very firmly visitor attractions and often with a distinctly commercial mindset.

Against such a background, the opening of Bradford City’s bantamspast museum in 2005, as a non-profit making concern by a group of supporters, could be viewed as the FC United moment of the museum world.

By Dame Mary Peters

The recent success of the golfers from Ulster is an incredible achievement for such a small area. Who would have believed that 16 year-old Lisa Maguire from Slieve Russell would win the Spanish Ladies Amateur Open Championship followed shortly afterwards by the sensational win by Rory McIlroy at the American Open? He followed in the footsteps of Graeme McDowell who won the same competition a year earlier. The cheers for Rory had scarcely disappeared before the ever popular Darren Clarke achieved a life long ambition by winning the Open Championship.

By John Evans

Britain, the nation that invented modern sport. That’s not the extravagant claim of some bragging Brit, but the Belgian head of the International Olympic Committee, speaking in Trafalgar Square one year ahead of the London 2012 opening ceremony.

We learn at school about the Industrial Revolution. Its most iconic symbol, Ironbridge in Shropshire, is one of 25 internationally-recognised World Heritage Sites in the UK. The bridge and blast furnaces, foundries and factories, pioneered the industrialisation that made the modern world.