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So just as the snow is eventually followed by the thaw, we move from 2010 to 2011 - and have a quick look at some of the Olympic milestones for the year ahead.

There is, I reckon, one over-arching thing that needs to be done. Up until now, the London 2012 preparations have gone very smoothly. The chairman and the chief executive are still in place, which is rare for Olympic cities, and the construction has been ahead of schedule. But that lack of drama has also meant a lack of headlines - and "steady as she goes" isn't the cry that gets millions of people fired up.

This ties in with what one veteran Olympic-watcher said to me recently: London doesn't at the moment feel like an Olympic host city. There's little signage, not many 2012-oriented events yet and none of the buzz that was apparent in Beijing when I went there at this kind of time before the Games.

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I'm not going to fight the inevitability that this time of year is about looking back and looking forward - so this is the first of two seasonal posts, written while looking out at truckloads of snow in my part of London. And it's based on what I said a year ago about the milestones we could expect to pass in 2010. So how did we do on the seven things I identified then?

Top of the agenda was the Winter Olympics, and I'm firmly in the ranks of those who thought Vancouver did a great job. Main lesson: it's not necessarily the big things that cause you problems but , and what happens then is a challenge in reputation management. We discussed this here at the time and in the superheated digital world it's remarkable how can become a common global currency. London 2012 can now see the trap if it misfires in any of its organisation.

Which leads into the crucial second milestone for 2010: the announcement of the London ceremonies' creative team. This was achieved on schedule, and it's difficult to see how it could be beaten for its array of talent. So the foundations are in place, but the real job starts now.

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More than enough words have been written about football and Fifa and the media and the World Cups of 2018 and 2022, so I'm not going to add much to those. But wearing my London 2012 hat, there were some issues arising this week that play into our story and how we deliver the Olympic Games.

I've written before about the importance of major events to national identity, and one obvious way that the IOC's 2012 decision changed things is that a country that expects to lose international contests suddenly became a winner.

So having gone through the failed Birmingham and Manchester Olympic bids along with the disappointment of the 2006 World Cup - not to mention the belief we never win the Eurovision song contest because people just don't like us - the successful London bid was transformational. Indeed, it was remarkable watching the crowds across England this week that their expectation was victory not the traditional "plucky losers" defeat.

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