Mayor Clashes with LOCOG Over Venues; 2011 Sport Accord for London

Mayor Clashes with LOCOG over Venues

(ATR) Three months before the deadline for finalizing venues for the 2012 Olympics, a top-level row has broken out between London’s mayor and the local organizing committee.

The debate boiled over at last week’s Olympic Board meeting, with Mayor Boris Johnson arguing for cost-cutting options against LOCOG’s desire to satisfy international sports federations and broadcasters.

Local news reports described the meeting as “acrimonious”, with Johnson accusing Games chiefs of “arrogance” and of “groveling” to IFs.

“If I have to take my shoe off and bang it on the desk I will,” Johnson was reported to have said at one point in the meeting, a reference to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s angry appearance at the United Nations in 1960.

London 2012’s original plans included a temporary arena being built on the Greenwich peninsular, next to the O2 Arena, to stage gymnastics and badminton, while boxing was to be staged at the ExCel center, just north of the Thames in Docklands.

Johnson wants to save the London rate-payers around $32 million by having the gymnastics and badminton in ExCel and moving boxing to Wembley Arena. The proposal was blocked by Colin Moynihan, chair of the British Olympic Association, who sits on the Olympic Board with the mayor, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell and LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe.

Moynihan insisted that London’s pledge to “put athletes first” must not be compromised by forcing boxers to traipse across London daily during the Games. Staging boxing at ExCel, he said, was “non-negotiable to the people that matter”.

Both boxing and badminton – which is staging its world championships at Wembley in 2011 – have rejected the possibility of being moved to the north-west London venue, which staged some events at the 1948 Olympics.

“If we have good sports venues around the city, then we must look at every opportunity to use them,” said a City Hall source. “Taxpayers simply will not understand spending millions on temporary venues that will be dismantled after the Games, never to be used again.”

Jowell has offered a compromise that requires a temporary venue to the east of Stratford, site of the Olympics, for gymnastics and badminton, with no change for boxing.

A feasibility study is due to be delivered next week, but it is now unlikely that LOCOG will be able to present a completed venue report to the IOC in time for next week’s meeting in Copenhagen.

Ballistic Screen Issue for Shooting Venue

The Olympic Board meeting confirmed that shooting events would be staged at Woolwich, although the detail of arrangements for the Georgian façade of the Royal Artillery barracks may disappoint sports officials and TV producers.

The Olympic Delivery Authority will have to erect a 62-foot-high “ballistic screen” to meet safety laws and prevent shotgun pellets from raining down on the homes of military personnel and a nearby children’s playground.

The barracks are in a built-up area of south-east London, making it impossible for the ODA to develop a shooting range with the minimum 300-yard safety zone. The Ministry of Defence, which owns the site, has refused to sanction the barracks being vacated during the Games.

“We do not want to be somewhere isolated outside London with only a satellite village,” Horst Schreiber, secretary general of the ISSF, shooting’s world body, said in support of the $65 million Woolwich venue.

2011 Sportaccord Lured To London

Sportaccord, the week-long conference organized by what was previously known as the General Assembly of International Sports Federations, is expected to be staged in London for the first time in 2011.

Mayor Johnson is expected to announce the deal next week, to coincide with the IOC Session and Olympic Congress in Copenhagen.

As well as giving the anticipated 2,000 delegates from the world of sport the opportunity to visit the Olympic city little more than a year before the 2012 Games, Sportaccord is understood to have chosen London ahead of Doha thanks to the offer of funding from tourist board Visit London, UK Sport and the London Development Agency. The 2010 edition of Sportaccord is also being held in Dubai, which may have weighed against consecutive editions in the Persian Gulf region.

A new Park Plaza Hotel near the south end of Westminster Bridge is believed to be the venue for the meeting.

An IOC Executive Board meeting would also be held during Sportaccord 2011.

2012 Venues on Tube Map

The Tube map of London is to get an overhaul ahead of 2012 with the addition of Olympic venues.The schematic map, which shows the stations on the subway system, has been championed as a design classic ever since it was introduced in 1931.

With London 2012 organizers’ aim of all Games visitors using public transport, the Tube will play a vital role in getting spectators from the Olympic Park to outlying venues such as Wimbledon, Lord’s and Horse Guards’ Parade.

“We want to see people moving around smoothly with a clear idea of where they're going and how they're getting there,” a City Hall spokesman said.

Briefs…

… London’s Olympic Park opened to the public for the third year running, with more than 4,000 taking bus tours around the site at the weekend.

… Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor-turned-California Governor, has been invited to the 2012 Games by the mayor of one of the city’s five host boroughs. Schwarzenegger, 62, trained at a gym in the area between 1966 and 1968, winning his first Mr Universe title in 1967.

… InterContinental Hotel Group, which was signed up by LOCOG as a tier three partner in June, has appointed Fast Track, the sports marketing agency founded by Alan Pascoe, to manage its 2012 Olympic sponsorship. IHG’s Holiday Inn will provide staff for the Olympic Village, as well as meeting facilities for LOCOG in the build-up to the Games.

Written by Steven Downes

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