London Update -- Decision on Shooting Venue; Mayor Accepts Spending Report

(ATR) London Mayor Boris Johnson disappointed that relocating 2012 venues would not result in significant reductions in overall costs. (Getty Images)Speculation is growing that the 2012 shooting venue will be moved in theabsence of any statement from London’s Olympic Board on the use of Woolwich Barracks.

The Olympic Board last week endorsed the recommendations of a costs review by consultants KPMG that badminton and gymnastics should be staged at Wembley Arena, rather than in a purpose-built temporary hall on the Greenwich peninsula. The move wouldsave $30 million.

With suggestions that the temporary shooting venue at Woolwich had doubled in cost to $60 million, its viability as a 2012 venue is under even greater doubt. Bisley, the national center and Olympic shooting venue in 1908 and 1948, has been ruled out on grounds of cost and because the IOC has said that the Surrey site is too far removed from the Olympic Village.

A decision on shooting is expected next month, with a site in Barking, east of the Olympic Park, now suggested.

Johnson “Disappointed” by KPMG Findings

The KPMG findings were a set-back for Boris Johnson, the London Mayor who took office in May promising to make wide ranging cuts to the 2012 Olympic budgets.

Jowell and Sebastian Coe, the chairman of LOCOG, both accused of profligacy over Games spending, will have welcomed the comments by a City Hall spokesman: “The Mayor recognizes that there was not the scope for savings and was disappointed about this - though not with the process. He accepts that this was a good report and not a whitewash.”

Deighton: “No Austerity Games Here”

Paul Deighton, the former merchant banker who is chief executive of LOCOG, maintains a bullish outlook on the 2012 Games, despite the grim global economic situation. LOCOG CEO Paul Deighton maintains that the 2012 Games will match Beijing despite an economic downturn. (Getty Images)

With the IOC in London this week for Beijing handover meetings, the comparisons with China’s expense-no-object Games could be invidious, but not for Deighton. “There are some things we will try and do as well as the Chinese, some things we will do differently. It wouldn't be an economic proposition to try and do better, but we can match it,” he said.

“The beauty of the Games is to provide the perfect platform for the world's greatest athletes to do their thing. We must preserve that, and while we do some things creatively, the picture of making it austere is wrong. We want a Games to be proud of. Austerity Games is not a phrase I support,” Deighton said in a Sunday newspaper interview.

“The credit crunch is one of the things that conditions the environment we operate in, but frankly that is overridden by the impact of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing. If you think of those as the three big events of the summer – the Olympics, Paras and credit crunch – they have all had a huge effect on us, but the Olympics are ahead of the credit crunch by some way.”

McColgan Fears Failure in the Long Run

Liz McColgan, the former world champion at 10,000 meters and cross-country, has hit out at her country’s ill-preparedness to win medals in distance events in 2012. “Endurance running in Scotland and the U.K. right now is a mess. Apart from Paula Radcliffe, we have no good distance runners, men or women,” said the Olympic silver medalist who is now coaching her 17-year-old daughter, Eilish, and several other promising Scots talents.

As a former chairman of Scottish Athletics, with the 2014 Commonwealth Games to be staged in Glasgow, McColgan is acutely aware of the need for success on home soil. “What everybody is starting to realize is that in 2012 and 2014, we need to have athletes and winners.

“As a nation we're very good at dragging our heels, but if somebody doesn't step up to the plate these athletes aren't going to develop.” McColgan is calling for three national centers of excellence – one of them based outside the U.K., at altitude, copying theblueprint used so successfully by Britain’s track cyclists. “The cyclists didn't get told to stay in their little corners of the U.K. They were told to go to Manchester, where they live, eat and sleep cycling and have the best backup and support. No stone is unturned.”

…Briefs

… A clue to basketball keeping its Olympic Park venue in 2012 came from Mayor Johnson when speaking at a recent Transport for London meeting, when he let slip that the ceilings in the changing rooms at Wembley Arena were not high enough to accommodate 7ft-tall men.

…No further downsizing of the Olympic Village is likely, after developer Lend Lease wrote to the 47 architects on its panel, telling them there will be no more work designing residential plots. In the letter, Rob Johnson, Lend Lease’s project director, said there would be further work in the fields of retail, Olympic and community facilities.

… American architectural firms HOK Sport and Cannon Design are on the 11-strong shortlist for $500 million-worth of work to convert existing sites, such as the O2 Arena and Horse Guards Parade, into Games venues. Others up for consideration for the final major design contracts for the 2012 Games include Lifschutz Davidson Sandlilands, Flacq, Hawkins Brown and David Morley Architects.

Five packages of “overlay work” are available, and some British firms have joined forces and drafted in specialist to see off the more experienced U.S. companies. The contract is due to be awarded early in 2009.

… The 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games will be staged on the Isle of Man, the 80,000 population Crown dependency in the Irish Sea.

All 71 of the Commonwealth’s nations and territories took part in this year’s CYG, staged in Pune, India, last month. In 2011, the sports to be contested by competitors aged 17 or under will be athletics, badminton, boxing, cycling, gymnastics, rugby sevens and swimming.

Written by Steven Downes

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