The Vancouver Winter Olympics will be remembered for several things: the deadly luge, Johnny Weir, and Canada's triumphant ice hockey win. But Sarah McClachlan's official Olympic song? Maybe not.

But that hasn't stopped a veritable sled-ful of British musicians pitching for the honour of composing an anthem for London's 2012 Summer Olympics. BBC Radio's 6 Music station (now under the axe because it actually dares to be good) has already identified some surprising front-runners who want to score countless TV promos and inspire billions of viewers.

Stadium-friendly Muse are open to the idea, with drummer Dominic Howard saying, "We've got a new song, so maybe we could use that." Not a very convincing bid perhaps, but they could certainly open the Games with a bang and they do give major laser.

Meanwhile, New Order's Bernard Sumner seems more eager, and he has past form having already had a hand in writing the World Cup anthem "World in Motion" in 1990. As if that wasn't qualification enough he also points out that he has the sporting chops, saying, "“[I’m] very interested. I’m a sporty guy myself. I go jogging every day. I jog 20 miles every day so I’m well into athletics.”

But perhaps the most interesting bid so far comes from The Horrors, with keyboard player and bassist Tom Cowan telling the station that he and bandmate Rhys Webb have already written a song called "Olympian". He told 6 Music, "It’s an electronic piece and it’s very evocative of the human frame and very athletic. But also graceful. It would be a lot better than whatever they choose, that’s for sure.”

Them's fighting words, to be sure, and yet history is littered with famous artists who have tried, and failed, to write a truly memorable Olympic song. Before they send those tracks to the London Mayor then, they may want to consider these previous attempts to capture "that one moment in time"...



Bjork - "Oceania"

This Medulla album track was written for the 2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony and Bjork performed it in the stadium immediately following the Parade of Nations. While admirably cliché-free (no "going for gold" lyrics for her), a song written from the point of view of the ocean wasn't, perhaps, in hindsight, the most inspiring start for the assembled athletes...






Giorgio Moroder - "Reach Out"

At the other end of the spectrum we find Italian dance legend Giorgio Moroder who composed "Reach Out" for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Anyone hoping for the timeless quality of his Donna Summer collaboration "I Feel Love", or his Academy Award winning work with protegé Harold "Axel F" Faltermayer on the Top Gun soundtrack, will leave sorely disappointed but "Reach Out" is, at the very least, a warning to Olympic lyricists everywhere. Terribly dated, sure, but rather brilliant for it (I think I've found my new ringtone) this song was no.1 in Germany, which pretty much says it all...





FACT: Moroder also contributed "Hand in Hand" for the 1988 Games in Seoul, which was regarded as the best Olympic theme song by then IOC chief Juan Antonio Samaranch. It was written on a napkin...





Freddie Mercury and Monsterat Caballé - "Barcelona"

The Spanish opera diva wisely "reached out" to the stadium-friendly Queen legend to help her create a suitably anthemic song for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. As she recalls, “he was a big opera fan and had come to see me in Barcelona. And when the mayor asked for a song to commemorate the Olympic Games we thought of him. He came to see me in Covent Garden. We worked on some ideas, he sat at the piano and we ended up improvising all through the night, but it was worth it.” It sure was, slyly capturing the kitschy nature of the Games but managing to provide a properly epic hook for TV promo producers the world over. However the unlikely super-duo did not perform it at the ceremonies themselves. Tragically, Mercury died the year before the Games and a grief-stricken Caballé refused to sing it with anyone else.





Whitney Houston - "One Moment in Time"

Written by the father of a Stroke, Albert Hammond Sr., with lyrics by John Bettis (Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", The Carpenters' "Top of the World"), this future talent-show audition standard was tailored to meet the needs of American broadcasters who now chose to focus their coverage on the triumph-over-adversity back-stories of the athletes. To this end they produced the 1988 Summer Olympics Album: One Moment in Time album in conjunction with NBC Sports which also included the instantly forgotten "Willpower" by Taylor Dayne and "Rise to the Occasion" by Jermaine Jackson. But it was the soaring orchestral pop of "One Moment in Time", boasting Houston at the top of her game, that achieved the rare feat of actually transcending the Olympics to fit just about any tear-soaked sporting montage.

Sadly, like the luge, attempting "One Moment in Time" is for brave, and highly qualified, souls only. Back in 1989, at the Grammy Awards, Whitney still had the chops...





Seven years later, however, it was starting to look like she was off them...





So that's what they're up against. Now the question is, who can pull it off? Gorillaz? Dizzee? Goldfrapp? Or will Simon Cowell manage to bribe the IOC to put Leona Lewis in the stadium on opening night? Only 878 days to go!