London Mayor Rejects Soccer Legacy for Olympics Stadium

The London Olympic stadium is not suitable for Premiership football. (Getty Images)(ATR) London mayor Boris Johnson is effectively ruling out any possibility that a Premiership soccer club would move into the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Games. And he says the economic crisis gripping the world market might lead to a rethinking of London’s contract with the IOC.

In Johnson’s first appearance as Mayor at the regular House of Commons Select Committee at Westminster he told members of Parliament that it was too late to reverse plans for the stadium’s 25,000-capacity legacy track and field format. Such a legacy was raised as a possibility when London was bidding for the Games four years ago.

Since Johnson was elected in May, he has attempted to re-open negotiations with a major soccer club to move to the Olympic Stadium after the Games.

But in his appearance before the select committee Oct. 7, Johnson admitted that probably is not going to happen.

“There are huge difficulties in getting a Premiership club and a long-term athletics legacy for the stadium. Everyone’s always known that from the very beginning,” Johnson said, adding, “But I’m not here today going to plunge the final stake through the heart of the idea of Premiership football.”

Stadiums surrounded by athletics tracks, although common in the rest of Europe, are unpopular with English football fans. It is now too late in the design phase to provide a “convertible” Olympic stadium, like the Stade de France in Paris which accommodates track, soccer and rugby with retractable seating. World championships or World Cup finals in all three sports have been staged in the Stade de France.

London’s plan for the Olympic Stadium may now be more aligned with Atlanta in 1996, where the Olympic Stadium was converted into a Major League Baseball stadium.

“We are building a 25,000-seater stadium that will be a temporary 80,000-seat venue during the Olympics,” was how one LOCOG official described it this week.

London’s last Olympics, in 1948, became known as the “Austerity Games” when they were staged in a city where post-war food rationing was the norm for the citizens (if not The Beijing Olympics were “fantastic”, London mayor Johnson said, but 2012 “…will be very, very different, much, much more fun. (Getty Images)the competitors).

Johnson suggests the international credit crunch will cause London again to “cut our clothes to suit our cloth”.

He said that economic turmoil meant he could not be bound by the rules of the IOC or the commitments of his predecessor as mayor.

“To be honest I am not so fussed about the strictures of the IOC. My issue is not with previous undertakings. I want a wonderful Games but one that is not too expensive.”

Johnson maintained that the “fun” 2012 Games would be delivered within the $18.6 billion budget.

"The whole thinking about the Olympics has changed in that market conditions have changed," he said.

“There is scope still for seeing what we can do to move venues around and rationalize, saving potentially some tens of millions of pounds.

Johnson admitted it was “astonishing” the media center will cost $760m, warning: “It's got to deliver a center which is useful because otherwise the media will attack the London Games as they did in Atlanta."

“But what we can’t do, and what I will not do, is prejudice the overall Games. We’re going to deliver a fantastic Games.”

He said London was not intimidated by the success of the Beijing Olympics, and would make the Games more entertaining for spectators.

“The IOC doesn't want London to produce a carbon copy,” Johnson said. "We can produce a Games just as good, if not better, without wasting a lot of money.”

Johnson revealed that LOCOG is considering issuing all visitors to the Olympic Park with handheld, Blackberry-type devices to provide up-to-date information on forthcoming events and action replays of that day’s action. At non-peak times at Olympic venues, children should be allowed into the park.

“It's my intention that central London will be the place that people come to hang out and spend their money before they go to the various Olympic sites around London. It will be more of a party atmosphere, a festival atmosphere.”

Written by Steven Downes

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