When London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, organizers promised an ambitious legacy: to get two million more people in England involved in sports and physical activity.

But with the Games in less than 18 months, that commitment now resembles a wheezing jogger, bent over and winded from a New Year’s resolution whose ambition could not be matched by exertion.

London’s original pledge evolved into a plan to get one million more people around England playing sports three or more times a week for at least 30 minutes at a time, known as the 3x30 plan. Even that target is proving elusive.

Figures issued in December by Sport England, the governing body for community sports, indicated that participation at the 3x30 level had increased by 123,000 since 2007-8, when the one million baseline was established. But that number increased by only 8,000 in the last year. At the current rate, the goal of one million new participants would not be reached in 2012-13 as hoped but more than a decade later in 2023-24.