Actuarial affairs are usually dry stuff but not so the the annual Actuaries' Lecture which I attended last week. The venue was Staple Inn Hall just off High Holborn. Never having been there before it was a pleasure to admire the hall and the stained glass in particular.The speaker was the hereditary peer Lord Colin Moynihan who, those with long memories will remember, won a gold medal as a rowing cox in the world championships and a silver medal at the Moscow Olympics. Now the Chairman of the British Olympic Association he was the guest speaker and spoke on the subject ''2012 An Olympic Dream-Can the Games deliver a Sporting Legacy for the UK''. The answer was unlikely to be 'no'.
He spoke widely and interestingly on the topic of the Olympics, beyond the legacy, especially on an athlete's need for fanatical attention to detail in order to win. He quoted the interesting statistic that of five gold medals we won at the last Olympics the total time taken for all five events was only a little over 12 minutes. The total time difference between Gold and Silver for all five events added together was 0.514 seconds. Just over half a second separates gold winners from silver winners across five events. Wining today is measured in hundredths of a second. A sobering thought for athletes in training.
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