LONDON VAUXHALL DEALERS

One hopes that such virtues can be ascribed to the Greek ode that Johnson has commissioned especially for the Olympics from Armand D’Angour, fellow in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford.

The ode itself is, as per Johnson’s instructions, to have the lightest of touches: six stanzas in Greek that all offer puns’ on athletes names.

For those who question whether this is an exercise in the Mayor’s personal amusement – Johnson, an Oxford classicist himself, once said of becoming Prime Minister: “Were I to be pulled like Cincinnatus from my plough, then it would be an absolute privilege to serve” – there will, mercifully, be a translation into English.

From the moment D’Angour’s creation is read out at the Royal Opera House on July 23, at a gala welcome for the International Olympic Committee, there will be no escaping the literary dimension of these Games.

The ritual imitates a tradition of the ancient Olympic Games, where poets including Pindar would compose odes in honour of victorious competitors.

Such was the symbolism of the Olympics’ restoration to Athens in 2004 that D’Angour offered this suitably Pindaric contribution:

Blessed precinct of the land of Athena

Immortal City of Theseus and the sons of Erechtheus

We will sing of you, whence Athenians of old

And heroes once set forth to the Games

Of shining Olympia.

You might be inspired, upon absorbing these soaring words, to study the intricacies of Pindar’s dithyrambs in greater depth. You might, equally, be tempted to disregard them as the intellectually aloof scribblings of a remote academic.

But on the second count, you would be misguided. For poetry, and the celebration of artistic merit, has remained enshrined in the Olympic movement to an extent that few in its modern incarnation appreciate.

From 1912 to 1952, Olympic medals were bestowed for works of art reflecting sport across architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture.

The story-makers in London this summer would do well to contemplate the deep cultural immersion of their forebears and the fact that, in the capital in 1948, it was possible for Finland’s Aale Tynni to win literary gold for her lyric poem Laurel of Hellas.

The notion that the rich sweep of poetry could inform a present-day Olympics is not so anachronistic.

Indeed, it was the innovation of Pierre de Coubertin, deemed to be the father of the modern Games, to incorporate art competitions into the Olympic programme.

Ever the virtuous pedagogue, De Coubertin was the son of an artist whose works featured in the Parisian Salon, and his obsession with giving the Games a broader edifying purpose grew all-consuming.

In 1904, he decreed: “In the high times of Olympia, the fine arts of were combined harmoniously with the Games to create their glory. This is to become reality again.”

It did seem a trifle skewed, though, that he should have claimed the gold for literature himself in 1912 for his poem Ode to Sport. Silver and bronze were not awarded.

But the legacy bequeathed by his poetic preoccupations is a positive one. Quite apart from D’Angour’s experiments in the metre of Pindar, the anticipation of these Olympics is stirring a national revival of perhaps the purest of art forms.

In the seaside Norfolk town of Wells-next-the-Sea, a group of residents have prepared for the torch relay next month by composing an ode of their own, entitled Going for Gold.

From Wordsworth’s affection for cricket to John Betjeman’s A Subaltern’s Love Song, a hymn to the rhythms of tennis, poetry and sport have been inextricably intertwined.

The impending Olympic narrative promises the strengthen the connection like never before.