LOOKING AHEAD TO 2012:DO YOU remember the time when Gay Mitchell, bless him, propagated the view that the Olympic Games could come to Ireland?

Ah, let’s be kind, mutterings of a different time and place. But, then, maybe the crystal ball was a little cracked, or clouded. His geography was just a little awry. Maybe we could pretend that the London 2012 are actually ours, given how many Irish construction workers were involved in the building of the various sporting emporiums and the numbers of once-in-a-lifetime attendees who will converge on the English capital next summer.

This is as close as we’ll ever get to staging an Olympics. It’s theirs, but it’s so close to home it is ours too. And, in these days of austerity, the only break this country got was Mitchell’s pipe dream never got off the ground.

In fact, the financial figures for the London Games are frightening: at the time of the bid in 2005, the estimated cost was £2.5 billion, which has been upgraded to a £9.3 billion (€11.1 billion) and the likelihood that it will rise even higher.

We dodged that one, that’s for sure. We may be the paupers of Europe, but even a feasibility study on hosting the Olympics would have stretched our abysmal resources.

It is a year that promises to be huge for sport – every Olympics year is – and Ireland’s qualification for Euro 2012 as well as rude health in rugby and golf makes predictions about the world of sport in 2012 a challenge.

Soothsaying is a risky old business, but those who have cast their eyes on to the sporting year ahead for us seem to be of the optimistic rather than pessimistic mindset. And especially so when it comes to Ireland’s haul of precious metal from the Games in London’s East End.

If not expecting bag loads, we are anticipating handfuls.

Hopefully, all of our clairvoyants prove right in their assessment that Katie Taylor, the dominant force in women’s boxing ahead of its debut in the Olympics, takes that dominance into the ring in London. The Bray fighter is, by a country mile, the one chosen as representing Ireland’s best chance of a medal although there is also a consensus that boxing – with the likes of John Joe Nevin also well fancied – will be Ireland’s strongest sport.

We’ll see.

It’s not all about the Olympics in the year ahead. Euro 2012 will occupy a sizeable chunk of the summer and it won’t come as any surprise that our gang of visionaries foresee a tournament in Poland and Ukraine that will be heavily fancied to land in Spain’s lap.

The main danger, it would seem, is Germany. As for Ireland? We’ll be lucky to get out of the group, is the consensus.

When it comes to the English Premier League, there is agreement that it will come down to a head-to-head showdown between Manchester City and Manchester United. In fact, we’re split on that one. Let’s put it this way: it will be either the blue side or the red side that triumphs.

There’s less division when it comes to who will lift the Heineken Cup.

Leinster – the holders – are the majority choice, with a couple of warnings that if anyone is to upset the apple cart for Leo Cullen and co it will be Toulouse.

It is a measure of Pádraig Harrington’s fall down the rankings and the low level of expectancy his game attracts that most of our men and women believe that just two Irish players will make the Ryder Cup team for the defence of the trophy in Chicago: Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell. Former world champion boxer Bernard Dunne does retain some faith in his fellow Dub to come good again.

Casting an eye into the future is, of course, a precarious art. After all, if we delve back into these pages of a year ago we could tell you some of our experts went for Real Madrid to win the Champions League, for Australia to win the Rugby World Cup and someone – albeit a tad tongue in cheek – even nominated Waterford as All-Ireland football final champions. You never know, their time might come. But not, as we now know, in 2011. And, according to our current soothsayers, Waterford’s time won’t come in 2012 either.

Still, for the more adventurous among you, an accumulator using Derval O’Rourke’s tip that Munster will win the Heineken Cup, Gerry Thornley’s vote for the Netherlands in the European Championships, Colin Byrne’s nomination of Galway in the All-Ireland hurling and Mary Hannigan’s plumping for Donegal in the All-Ireland football would bring up a four-timer of about 12,700 to 1.

Stranger things have happened, of course.