- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
When two key Australian Olympic officials visited London in June for an update on the 2012 Games, they were pretty impressed with what they saw.
They toured the massive Olympic Park site at Stratford in east London, where work was well underway on the STG547 million ($A1.1 billion) stadium, and had briefings on issues including transport, technology, accommodation and new sporting venues.
Organisers were keen to press home the message to the International Olympic Committee’s press committee chairman Kevan Gosper and the Australian Olympic Committee’s media director Mike Tancred, who were in town with a contingent of officials and journalists, that all was well in the host city.
Preparations were on budget and schedule, despite the recession which has hit Britain hard.
“I think it will be one of the great Games,” Gosper told AAP afterwards.
Tancred was just as enthusiastic.
“Initially we didn’t think they would compete with Beijing from a size point of view but the Olympic Park is certainly of Beijing standards,” he said.
But what Gosper and Tancred weren’t told by London Olympic Organising Committee (LOCOG) executives was the mounting concerns about the ability to fulfil the city’s much-touted promise of a lasting sporting legacy once the Games end.
Monday marks the three-year anniversary of when London will lift the curtain on its record-breaking third Games.
With the clock ticking, LOCOG and the government find themselves embroiled in arguments over the future use of the 80,000-seat Olympic stadium and whether the Games will encourage more Britons to take up sport.
The London Olympics bid team made much of how the stadium would be transformed into a top-class athletics venue after the Games and how an extra million Britons would take up sport as a result of hosting the world’s biggest sporting event.
But while work is on track to finish the stadium in 2011, the government is facing increasing calls to dump its plan to reduce it to a 25,000 seat venue and install a school and skills academy.
Chair of the London 2012 Legacy Delivery Company, Baroness Ford, wants a new plan considered which would see the stadium remain at full capacity in case London hosts the 2015 rugby World Cup and/or 2018 soccer World Cup.
Her idea has won support from the head of the Olympic Delivery Authority David Higgins, who has cited the success of Sydney using its Olympic stadium at full capacity for an extended period after the 2000 Games before it was downsized.
But Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell is determined to stick to the original plan.
Jowell, however, might not have a say for much longer if voters toss out the Labour government at the next national election, due by June 2010.
The Conservative opposition has already vowed to re-examine all options for the stadium if, as widely expected, they win the election.
“There is no budget for maintaining an 80,000 stadium between 2012 and 2018,” Jowell says.
“We have been very clear in our commitments to the IOC in our legacy use which will be as a grand prix athletics stadium.”
Complicating the debate is the fact that no post-Games business plan has been drawn up for the stadium nor have new tenants been found.
Confusion also surrounds whether the promise to increase sport participation can be lived up to.
The government has vowed that by 2012 every British school student will be offered five hours of sport a week, with free swimming available for under 16s and pensioners.
There’s also a further commitment to get an extra one million people into sport or other physical activities by the time of the opening ceremony.
It’s a big ask, especially in a country where the weather is poor most of the year and the main focus when it comes to sport is on soccer.
A study released in June by Sport England found sport participation rates during the year to April 2009 had not changed from levels seen in 2007 and 2008.
Some sports, including Olympic sports like sailing and gymnastics, recorded a drop in participation rates.
Meanwhile reports have emerged claiming the government ditched a STG30 million ($A60.34 million) project that would have involved Prince Charles encouraging 10,000 young people into sport.
The government insists the project was only ever a “proposal” and that an “ambitious new campaign” will be launched in 2010.
Chair of the Central Council for Physical Recreation Brigid Simmonds still needs convincing.
“At the moment (amateur) sports clubs feel pretty far removed from what is going on in Stratford and the challenge for the organisers is to make them feel more engaged with the aims of 2012,” she said.
Despite the questions dogging the Games organisers, Gosper says there is plenty LOCOG can be proud of, in particular, the much needed injection of new life into what has been a rundown part of London thanks to the Olympic Park development.
“Nothing’s perfect and there will be glitches,” he said.
“But now there are buildings coming out of the ground out in east London and people will see just what an astonishing regeneration program this is.
“I haven’t seen a site like it anywhere else in western Europe and I’ve got to go a long way to match the activity in some of the previous organising committees including Sydney, Beijing and Athens.
“But this is fantastic and it will leave an astonishing legacy for this city.”
As for Jowell, she is confident LOCOG and the government will deliver on their promises.
“What won 2012 for London was the scale of our legacy ambition,” she wrote in Britain’s Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.
“Not just what the Olympics could do for London, but what London could do for the Olympics.
“Let our legacy be judged on what we promised.”