London's Olympic dream is still alive

Following the Wembley fiasco, Sports Editor Simon Greenberg wrote that the chances of a London Olympics had been dealt a severe blow. But this week the Government defended their intervention over Wembley to a Parliamentary select committee.

Now, CHRIS SMITH, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, says the hopes of bringing the Games here are stronger than before

LONDON'S Olympic dream lies in tatters.

That was what Standard Sport said the day after I announced the Government's decision on the future of Wembley Stadium.

In fact, the dream had just been kept alive. But then there has been a lot of half-truth, bluster and nonsense spoken about the development of the new Wembley Stadium.

Thankfully, the facts are at last emerging. A committee of MPs is examining how the decision to remove athletics from Wembley was made. On Tuesday, Kate Hoey and I described the full sequence of events that led to it.

The Government has never doubted that the plans for Wembley will produce the world's finest football stadium. What has always been at issue is the ability of the proposed stadium to stage athletics.

That was the basis on which Wembley were given 120 million from the Lottery. They were required to build a stadium capable of staging major athletics events, such as the World Athletics Championships and the Olympics.

At first, it was thought Wembley would do that by building a stadium similar to the Stade de France, with retractable seating over a running track. Instead, they proposed a temporary platform.

It is helpful to imagine exactly what that would entail. A concrete slab 20 feet deep and 10 acres in size - bigger than the iceberg that sank the Titanic - suspended above the Wembley pitch.

A structure so massive that the stadium would have to be shut for a whole year while it was constructed and then taken down.

A total of 23,000 seats would be taken out of use and 13,000 temporary seats erected on top so Wembley could continue to stage big football matches and provide the 80,000 seats needed for an Olympic Games.

Common sense suggests it is impractical - and that is before you consider the cost: 23m for a lump of concrete that would be demolished as soon as the athletics was over.

Wembley say it was innovative. Maybe - but they weren't paying for it. It was Lottery players who would again pick up the tab. They would also have to find 15m to buy land for a warm-up track and yet more cash to compensate Wembley for loss of ticket revenue while the vast platform was being built and the stadium was in athletics mode.

Millions of pounds spent, yet no permanent legacy for athletics. On top of that, the British Olympic Association - the only organisation that could bid to bring an Olympic Games to London had major concerns about the quality of views.

People are already saying: "Why didn't you step in and stop all this sooner?" The Select Committee warned in May of possible problems - and their report underlined our concerns.

In April, ministers had sought further assurances that proper provision was being made for athletics. We were told that the preferred design was demountable seating over a permanent running track. Unbeknown to us, there was then a change of plan.

In July, we saw the designs - and the platform - for the first time.

Immediately, concerns were raised and Wembley were asked to show the BOA how they would fit in 13,000 extra seats to give them the 80,000-capacity venue they needed to mount a credible bid for a London Olympics. That took until September. And when they saw the detail, the BOA were alarmed. With the agreement of everybody involved, Kate Hoey asked independent experts Ellerbe Beckett, a firm recommended by Wembley, to see if those concerns were justified. They found serious grounds for concern.

Wembley then invited BOA officials to sit in a mock-up of the temporary seats. Chief Executive Simon Clegg has since said: "I could not even see the head of the runner on the inside or the outside track. That is how bad the situation was."

The BOA concluded that a London bid for the 2012 or 2016 games with the proposed Wembley as the centrepiece would be doomed to failure.

That, coupled with my concerns about value-for-money, led the Government to conclude that we could secure our aim - the best long- term deal for football, rugby league and athletics - only by removing athletics from Wembley. And there will be no going back.

The Government accepted an offer from the FA to return 20m from the Lottery grant. Added to the savings made from not building the platform, there was a decent sum of money to set up athletics for the long-term.

The Wembley saga has been branded a fiasco. In fact it would have been a fiasco had we not taken the action we did, as that would have sounded the death knell for London's Olympic bid.

I don't doubt that the players in this drama have acted in good faith.

But, as this episode has shown, you can't have the perfect stadium for football and athletics. It has to be a compromise and, in this case, the compromise on offer to athletics was a compromise too far.

Now the right solution has been reached, we are getting on with the job of bringing major events to this country. Wembley will be the centrepiece for football; and work is now well advanced on identifying an alternative venue for world-class athletics.

Only this week, UK Athletics submitted its Government-backed bid to stage the 2005 World Athletics Championships in London.

Chief Executive David Moorcroft said the Government's decision provided "a solution that actually is long-term far better for athletics and better for major events in this country".

It is also the best solution for football, rugby league and London. It will leave a legacy of world-class facilities for three sports - and with the Olympic dream still alive.

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