GO on then, just this once, I’ll admit I was wrong.

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about the London Olympics – or the “absurd jamboree” as I called it – in which I complained that £9.3bn of taxpayers’ money had been spent on events of no interest to me, such as jumping into sand and throwing a metal Frisbee.

I went on to describe athletics as about as interesting as a night on the town with John Major.

If the Olympics were Christmas, I happily accepted the role of Scrooge, yelling “bah, humbug!” to anyone who had the cheek to get excited about the upcoming Games.

Three weeks on and the absurd jamboree has been and gone. And I have to confess that I enjoyed it.

Every day seemed to bring dozens of compelling stories, as four years of back-breaking training dissolved in a second, either into the joyous validation of victory or the inconsolable emptiness of defeat.

There was a fine example of the contrast of the Olympics at Eton Dorney last Saturday.

Who can forget the look of sheer joy on the face of rower Kat Copeland as she realised that she and team-mate Sophie Hosking had crossed the line first in the lightweight women’s double sculls?

“We’ve won the Olympics! We’re going to be on a stamp tomorrow,” she screamed in disbelief.

And then, just minutes later, fellow Britons Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase missed out on the lightweight men’s double sculls gold they had been expected to win, finishing second to the Danes by a whisker.

An exhausted Hunter had to be helped from his boat by Sir Steve Redgrave before an emotional interview with the BBC in which he said: “We gave everything. We tried everything. We wanted to win so badly and sorry to everyone who we have let down.”

The poor guy was barely able to stand, let alone speak, as he tried to process the reality of defeat.

In just a few minutes at Eton Dorney, four young lives were defined forever by a few strokes of an oar.

That contrast in emotions was present in every event – even the throwing a metal Frisbee event – as victor and vanquished confronted their fate.

Looking back on the column I wrote three weeks ago, I have to say I stand by most of it. The Olympics were over-hyped and over-priced.

I was right to point out that the Games exclude most of the popular sports like rugby and cricket, and I was correct in my prediction that the football tournament would be second rate.

But where I was wrong was in mocking track and field as merely throwing giant Frisbees and jumping over bars.

I watched at least some of the athletics every evening in the second half of the Games. Sometimes I tuned in from the start.

It may not have the complexity, the interplay or the unpredictability of team sports, but athletics can still be interesting, enthralling even.

What struck me most about the Olympics was the way that everyone seemed to want to use the Games to further their own view of the world. The event is so vast, so varied, that it can be used to support any number of arguments.

For instance, I’m sure you’ve seen the alternative medals table which shows Yorkshire – with Huddersfield’s Ed Clancy, Nicola Adams from Leeds, Sheffield’s Jessica Ennis etc. – sitting proudly in 12th place, above the likes of Spain and Jamaica.

Proof positive, say many in this part of the world, that God’s Own County is fantastic.

I take a slightly contrary view that Yorkshire’s superiority is so obvious as to need no sporting confirmation to back it up.

This would still be the best part of England, even if the county’s Olympians returned North with nothing to show for their efforts.

On Monday Gordon Brown used the success of the British cycling team to support his view that Scotland should vote against independence in 2014.

Many right-wing commentators have pointed out that a high percentage of Britain’s medallists went to public school. Proof, they say, of the state sector’s weakness.

On the left, many celebrated Super Saturday in the Olympic Stadium – when a Somali immigrant, a mixed-race woman and a ginger man from Milton Keynes won three golds for Britain in one evening.

But all of these are lazy arguments, the kind of arguments that can’t be bothered getting out of bed at 5am every day for training.

If the union between England and Scotland is a good thing, then it’s a good thing whether or not Edinburgh’s Sir Chris Hoy can get his bike round a velodrome a fraction of a second faster than five other cyclists.

If private schools are fantastic, then they’re fantastic whether or not a minuscule fraction of their output can persuade horses to jump over unfeasibly high fences.

And if multiculturalism is great – and I think it is, by the way – then it’s great whether or not Mo Farah can run 25 times round a track slightly quicker than a few dozen other men.

We should all stop looking for political validation in the London Olympics and just accept the Games for what they were: two weeks of great entertainment brought to us by people who trained for years to achieve their dreams.

Well done to all the competitors, to the organisers, the volunteers and the security staff on a fantastic event.

And well done to you, dear reader, for paying for the whole thing.