A YEAR on from London 2012, the jury remains out on whether Britain can achieve an appropriate Olympic legacy.

A year out from the Commonwealth Games, the debate rages as to whether Scotland can deliver one on the back of 2014. This remains in the balance.

The Olympics will be celebrated this weekend with the three-day Anniversary Games in Stratford as Glasgow ticks off the one-year countdown.

Lord Coe, London's biggest single architect, has no doubt where the legacy will be delivered – in schools. He acknowledges Britain has "frittered away legacy before," and has been discussing a long-term school sport strategy with the respective ministers for education, health, sport, media and culture. 
He considers this a 20-year project, but says: "We needed to get it structurally right in the first year . . . we've made a good start, but it's only a start."

In Scotland, sport is devolved, 
so Glasgow and the Scottish government must learn the lessons, and be quick off the mark. Coe paints these days with a broad brush on large canvas, but Herald Sport has spoken to a woman experienced in detail at the coal face, former Olympic and World 400 metres champion Christine Ohuruogu.

The London 2012 silver medallist was raised in the shadow of the Olympic stadium, and returns there this weekend to compete for the first time since, in a warm-up for the world championships next month. Nobody is better equipped to assess legacy impact on the ground. Newham, where Ohuruogu lives, has the most diverse population in the UK: 43% Asian, 26% black, and only 10% white British. English is the first language for only 35%, with 
144 languages being spoken in the borough's schools. From 2007 to the end of 2011, unemployment rose 
to 15%, the highest of any London borough, with 86% of residents living in the UK's fifth most deprived area. It features high on league tables in which no society wants to appear, including physical inactivity. This despite 30% of the population being under 20. It is hard to avoid comparisons with Glasgow's East End, damned on similar tables.

Ohuruogu has embraced a personal mission to visit every Newham educational establishment, in an attempt to inspire pupils, because she believes school is where lives are changed, since it did so 
for her.

"I kind of set myself a ridiculous challenge, of trying to visit all the schools in Newham," she said. 
There are more than 100, including primaries, secondaries and colleges. "It's a long job. Off season it was a lot easier. In season it's," she pauses, and gives a bellow of laughter, 
"it's kind of dimmed a little bit."

She hoped to complete it in a year. "Now I think it will take me two years to get them all done."

Athletes and coaches all have a responsibility, "to make sure we leave something positive for the young people to carry on."

She has embraced the self-imposed task because, "the kids of Newham were the core of Olympic fever. For me the change starts . . . when we talk about grassroots you really mean the school room. 
That's where I started feeling my love of sport. When I think about school, it's about that passion I had as a child, growing up.

"I really think if we are talking about changing attitudes and changing communities, that's where it starts. The Olympics is something that a lot these kids can hitch their dreams and aspirations on, and that can drag them through the early part of their career and into adulthood. I think it's important that we start looking at trying to change attitudes. We have to get them when they are young and impressionable, rather than when they are older and too cool to get involved."

She believed, however, that the Games would bypass her local community – a view shared by some in Dalmarnock.

"That was my fear, that a lot of these youngsters who were very close to the Olympics would not really get the chance to embrace it properly. 
A lot of these kids are under-privileged. I thought they might have not felt it was for them, that it's for everybody else who can have a lot more access. I wanted to tell them that the Olympics is for you."

She explains how she went to school just down the road. "A lot of them know the kind of school I went to. A lot of them went to the same shopping mall I went to, the same parks I used to run round. 
They would know where that park was. 'I came from down the road, just like you did, and I was able to compete in a stadium just a mile from where I grew up'."

Interviewing Ohuruogu can sometimes be hard work. Here, she was animated like I have rarely seen her. Legacy is a passion, far removed from political rhetoric.

So is it working? "These things always take time. If you're asking whether support for the sport is still there, I think largely it is. You've seen more; from my experience anyway, from the schools I've visited. We want our sport to be out there. We want people to feel the passion that we feel, for what we do every day. We talk about legacy, but legacy is not going to work if the kids don't want to do it."

She gets emotional on her mission, describing it as rewarding but tiring. She spends an hour in each school, addressing assembly, helping at PE lessons or with sports leaders, doing presentations and careers evenings. "I am at their disposal, whatever they want.

"It's somebody who went to the same school, and it's seeing them up close. You're normal, you are not superhuman. They actually see that you are normal, and I am local. 
Very, very local."

At her own primary school she nearly started crying. "I thought, 'No, I can't'. To actually be the subject of an assembly, because usually, when I was in school, 
I was the one sitting on the floor. 
The head teacher when I was there was actually in the hall. A few teachers that taught me were there, that was a bit . . .

"There are a lot of good kids. Some teachers say, 'Oh, it's a problematic class.' But you know what? For that one hour I've got them, they are the best kids you can ever ask for. 
They are quiet. They sit. They listen. They ask questions. They respond, so they can't be that bad.

"I try to get all of them to hold the medals. They can wave them around. They can do whatever they want with them. They like to see the Beijing one because it's gold, and the London Games one because it's got the 
River Thames on it. A young person designed the logo, so I say this is what a young kid did, and this is the silver medal that everyone has."

If, 15 years from now, a child she has inspired is in the Olympics, Ohuruogu "would be happy that we've done a good job. You want kids to see what you do and to think, 
'I can do that. I can go out and win 
a medal.' I'd be proud that I'd had a part to play."

She plans to be around for the 
Rio Olympics in 2016. On Saturday, Fife's Commonwealth hurdles silver medallist and double European champion, Eilidh Child, races Ohuruogu. If Scotland does not use her as a legacy mentor, they will have missed a trick. Better by far if each of the host 2014 team goes into the nation's schools to preach Ohuruogu's message.