WHEN London was awarded the 2012 Olympics last summer, Lord Coe was quick to insist that the Games would be a national occasion.

The capital might be the focal point for everything that happens in five years' time, but, by then, the benefits of a British Olympics should have permeated to each and every region of the country.

Lofty ideals undoubtedly, but on the evidence of everything that has happened since that unforgettable announcement in Singapore, ones that are already falling by the wayside.

Forget broken promises about costs - it is broken promises about benefits that are threatening North-Eastern support for the Government's Olympic project.

First came confirmation that the region's only direct involvement in the Games would be a small number of football matches at St James' Park. Given the International Olympic Committee's preference for self-contained celebrations, at least that was to be expected.

Then came news that subsidised travel to London for the duration of the Games had already been ruled out as too expensive. While residents of the capital will be able to walk out of their front door to watch the marathon for free, North-Eastern families will be expected to shell out upwards of £200 for the privilege of sitting on an overcrowded train for three hours before they've even thought about buying tickets for the synchronised swimming.

And then this week came the icing on the cake, confirmation that sports charities in the North-East were already losing out on millions of pounds worth of funding that was being chanelled straight into the London 2012 coffers.

This year's lottery funding for Sport England North-East, an organisation that is committed to encouraging almost 35,000 North-Easterners a year to take up regular sport, has already been cut by £4.4m.

Next year, the shortfall is expected to be even greater, with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport desperate to shore up the gaping holes that continue to appear in the Olympic budget.

Houghton and Washington East MP Fraser Kemp has already expressed his "genuine concern" at the negative impact that the 2012 Olympics are having on sport in the North-East.

That concern is being shared by a growing number of charities, community groups and grassroots sports organisations that are already feeling the effects of the current funding squeeze.

Clubhouses will not be repaired, equipment will not be purchased and, all the while, the most unhealthy region in the whole of Great Britain will slip into an even greater malaise.

It is not too late for the Olympics to act as a catalyst for sporting and social improvements within the North-East.

But the 2012 Organising Committee must look beyond their short-term objectives and see that slashing the region's funding will not leave the kind of legacy that Lord Coe promised in Singapore. Back then, the head of London's bidding committee promised a Britain in which sport was at the heart of social and cultural decision-making.

If current trends continue, however, his legacy will be a divided nation. London will boast a sporting infrastructure to rival any in the world, and a regenerated East End invigorated by state-of-the-art rail links.

The rest of the country, however, will be a sporting backwater, starved of investment and robbed of spirit.

If that was to happen, then all of last summer's celebrations will have been in vain. And the North-East could hardly be blamed for turning its back on London's Olympic Games.

Olympics organisers are promising the best that sport has to offer in five years' time, but nothing will surpass the epic that was played out on London's most famous tennis court last weekend.

Rafael Nadal's performance in the Wimbledon men's final confirmed the Spaniard's standing as one of the greatest tennis players in the world. Roger Federer's efforts to beat him, however, underlined the Swiss star's status as the best of all time.

Twice in a thrilling final set, Federer found himself at break-point down to a player whose baseline power is unsurpassed. Twice, like the champion that he is, he produced a spell of serving that was simply unanswerable.

A sure sign of greatness is the ability to plumb previously untapped depths when the situation demands it most. By dominating Sunday's decisive fifth set to equal Bjorn Borg's record of five successive Wimbledon titles, Federer cemented his current position as the foremost sportsman in the world.

English cricket sent out an SOS to Marcus Trescothick yesterday - Save Our Summer.

Despite pulling out of last winter's Ashes tour when the stress of the job became too much, the Somerset batsman is in England's provisional squad for September's inaugural Twenty20 World Cup.

Trescothick has been suffering from clinical depression - without wanting to belittle his problems, I imagine that every England fan who watched last weekend's dismal one-day defeat to the West Indies knows exactly how he feels.