London Latest -- Rogge: Stadium "Impressive"; Budget Cuts

(ATR) IOC President Jacques Rogge has given his seal of approval toLondon’s Olympic Stadium, describing work on the stadium and OlympicPark as "truly impressive" after visiting the site in Stratford Mondaymorning.

Under the eye of LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe and eight of the Young Ambassadors" who traveled to Singapore as part of London’s winning bid five years ago, Rogge was tasked with screwing in the 2012th seat to the stadium.

"The Olympic Stadium is the centerpiece of the Games because it is where, during the Opening Ceremony, the athletes and spectators’ Olympic dreams become reality and it is also where the Games come to an end as the flame is extinguished after 16 days of exciting competition," said Rogge, who is on a four-day inspection visit of London with members of the IOC co-ordination commission.

"Having helped to put the 2012th seat in place, I can now picture what spectators and athletes lucky enough to be here on 27 July 2012 will experience and I am sure that they will be impressed.

"The progress that has been made on the Stadium, and in the Olympic Park in general, is truly impressive and I congratulate the entire London 2012 team on their work."

Installation of seats in the 80,000 capacity stadium started last week and are currently being installed at a rate of 700 per day.

Olympic Delivery Authority CEO David Higgins said that the "finishing line is in sight" for construction.

"Over the last two years, the Olympic Stadium has risen from the ground and changed the skyline of east London," he said.

"The start of the seat installation clearly demonstrates the strong progress we have made in creating the venue that will be at the heart of the action in 2012. With the finishing line in sight, we remain on track to complete construction of the Stadium next summer."

Rogge happy with "sound" budget – but more cuts likely

After visiting the Olympic Park Rogge met Britain’s new Prime Minister, David Cameron, and Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for media, culture and sport, at Downing Street.

High up on the agenda was likely

to be the austerity measures proposed in last month’s budget and reassurances that this will not further affect the balance sheet of the Olympic Delivery Authority.

Within days of taking power in May, one of the coalition government’s first acts was to cut nearly $41 million from the Olympic Delivery Authority budget as part of nearly $10 million savings announced in a spending review.

But Rogge today insisted that the Olympic budget is "sound" and that the ODA was able to operate within its new constraints.

"I think the budget of the Olympic Delivery Authority, including the cuts requested by the government of $41 million is a sound budget," Rogge told the BBC.

"Already the ODA have cut costs of more than $908 million. They have a lean budget and the same for LOCOG.

"We are at a point where every pound has to be very well spent."

Yet the cuts announced in May were dwarfed last month by an austerity budget, with 25 per cent departmental cuts proposed across the board.

Leaked documents over the weekend suggest that government departments have been told to make allowances for savings as high as 40 percent.

The actual implications for the Olympics are still unclear, with the government refusing to "ringfence" the Olympics budget from the savings.

In May, Olympics minister Hugh Robertson told Around the Rings that further savings couldn’t be ruled out. "That is a reflection of the fact that we are in the worst economic crisis that has affected this country in any of our lifetimes. We cannot be immune to that," he said.

What is clearer is that more than $206 million cuts to the London mayor’s budget – which are likely to include $151 million cuts to the London transport budget and the removal of the Government Office for London – threaten to bring Cameron and Mayor Boris Johnson into conflict.

A source close to Johnson yesterday briefed British newspapers that the mayor is "prepared to explode" if such savings are enforced upon him.

"He thinks it is completely wrong to cut London’s money when it started making savings long before the Coalition came to power," said the source

"If this goes ahead it will have a devastating effect on public services in London. Boris is prepared to explode."