Today (July 27, 2010) we are two calendar years from the start of the London 2012 Summer Olympics. A word we’re likely to hear a good few times over those 731 days is ‘legacy’. It was a key part of the London 2012 bid back in 2005, when the International Olympic Committee chose London as its new host city.

But what does legacy mean? Surprisingly, perhaps, given its omnipresence, the actual meaning of legacy for 2012 isn’t as easily deciphered as one might expect – and it’s a concept that seems to shift depending on who is using the word.

There’s the legacy mentioned in the original bid – and talked about by Tony Blair. There’s the legacy enshrined in this document – now archived by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport as a result of the change in government. And there’s the legacy of the current leadership, which differs starkly from that of the last.

Yesterday, for example, sports minister, Hugh Robertson, was reported in The Guardian assuring us all that the legacy of the Games would not be diminished as a result of swingeing government cuts, while defending the decision to merge the bodies responsible for sport in the UK to save money.

But, in the same newspaper’s online archive, it’s possible to see how Mr Robertson’s definition of legacy falls rather short of that of a previous government minister, Andy Burnham. Funding for the free swimming project that Mr Burnham described as the ‘key legacy’ of the Games has already been cut by Mr Robertson.

While keeping track of legacy at a national level may seem complicated, it’s nothing when compared to attempting to understand what’s going on at a regional or local level – where politicians seem happy to use the games in an even more liberal fashion. Take Birmingham, Britain’s second most populous city, where in December 2008 the council announced plans for a brand new Olympic standard pool. Council leader, Mike Whitby, was once reported to have said that the pool was an important part of the city’s plans to capitalise on the 2012 Games, but that assertion no longer passes his lips.

That’s because it now turns out the council doesn’t have the money to build the facility in time for the Games. There’s no deadline for its delivery, while the city’s general swimming facilities – and the lack of an Olympic-size pool in particular – today led the city’s highest profile swimming coach to quit his job in disgust. The pool may not be a direct part of the legacy, but it would have helped contribute to a wider commitment made in the in the last government’s Legacy Action Plan to increase community participation in sport. That commitment is already looking shaky with the axing of free swimming. And that’s just one cut – today Mr Robertson confirmed that the £27million reduction to the Olympics budget is likely to be followed by more budget tightening.

Given that we’ve already started to lose this Olympic legacy before the Games has even arrived, it seems only right that we try to take a little more care of it in future. I’ve started my own tiny attempt at this with what I call, admittedly rather grandly, an Olympic Legacy Tracker. Despite the name, it’s just a Google Spreadsheet with the details of promises I’m aware of that are connected to the London Olympics and some information about them, including their current status (and some colour coding so it’s easier to see what’s happening).

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The information is by no means complete – in fact it’s just a very small sample. I guess the challenge is now to fill out more details and keep it up to date. I’ve made the document entirely public, so anyone can edit it if they like (I’ll be keeping another version private, too) and I guess I’ll do my best to work on it whenever I hear anything that’s going on. It’s a slightly daft idea, but I hope it helps to clarify just what this games – which has ‘legacy’ at its heart – is all about.