Rio 2016: When the Olympics begin, the doom and gloom will fade away

The party will start once proceedings get under way

Rio parties after being awarded the Games in 2009 (Getty)

On your marks, get set, kerboom! We are almost there, the point of it all, the contest. The negative stuff is never going away, but for a fortnight at least the emphasis shifts to athletic performance.

Remember Super Saturday at the London Games, when Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford stopped the clocks? Prime yourself. All three go again on the middle Saturday in Rio on what promises to be another epic episode in the history of British sporting endeavour.

For an island nation of no great geographical scope, Britain has a profound attachment to athletic excellence. Only the United States, Russia and Germany have won more medals in the Olympic arena. Forgive the Union flag-waving, but if we can’t light a big cigar on occasions such as these we might as well all relocate to Pyongyang.

London, with 29 golds, represented the apotheosis for Team GB, enough to seal third spot behind the United States and China. The target in Rio is to make the XXXI Olympiad Britain’s most successful on foreign soil.

Chris Froome is in the slot to ­deliver the first gold of the Games for Britain in the men’s cycling road race on Saturday. The four-hour time difference feeds Froome’s wheels into our living rooms in the afternoon, skirting the Copacabana waterfront as the peloton spin towards the finish in Parc Flamengo.

For the diehards out there, Bury’s James Guy goes in the men’s 400 metre freestyle in the early hours of Sunday. At 2.30am to be precise. Guy is typical of many of the men and women we encounter in this quadrennial fortnight. They are known among their own sporting communities but not so much by sofa-surfing sporting casuals.

Froome will hope to build on his Tour de France success in Rio (Getty)

Guy distinguished himself at the world championships last year by becoming the first Briton to win gold in the 200m freestyle. He is up against China’s mighty Sun Yang, but then you knew that, didn’t you? Should he prevail, this Millfield-educated exile from the north will have his pick of the chat shows on his return.

So now we are barely 24 hours into the action and already the Olympic spirit, which somehow survives the death threats inherent in the sinister machinations of drug cheats, corrupt federations and politicians on the take, is erasing the stench of ritual abuse.

Despite all the reasons to believe otherwise, the good in us begins to engage. We feel not the pull of base creation dragging us ever lower but the vaulting high of athletic purity manifest in the achievements of folk not so very different from you or I, save for a talent honed over the odd 10,000 hours.

The majority of those who mount the medal platforms do so for the love of the game. No amount of coin would persuade you to toil for six hours a day in a pool like Guy and his ilk. The idea of winning Olympic gold, however, gets a kid out of bed in a morning.

We are less than a fortnight from the start of return of the Premier League. The Football League kicks off this weekend. Before we know it we shall be immersed in a fug of football mania, that infernal chamber of inflated egos, churning indignation, neurosis and bile.

We love it, of course we do. But the Olympics, for all its faults, connects us to our better selves, if only briefly. It is how we imagine the world to be growing up, a place that rewards effort, celebrates achievement, inspires improbable deeds. So get the bunting out and wave that British standard with pride.