The Olympic legacy

Bids have to be submitted today for use of the Olympic stadium in Stratford once the 2012 Games are out of the way. There are two known bidders, both football clubs. West Ham, whose present ramshackle stadium is just down the road from Stratford, want to retain the running track to allow the stadium to remain available for track and field events, even though this will result in a less than ideal stadium for watching football. Tottenham Hotspur, whose present ramshackle stadium is in another part of London altogether, basically want to tear the stadium down and build a new one for football, while also putting money into the (equally ramshackle) Crytsal Palace stadium for future athletics use.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but one thing I'm sure of is that the decision should not be based on any perceived promise, made in an effort to secure the Games for London, to retain the stadium as a "legacy" venue for future athletics events. The people trying to enforce that promise -- Lord Coe et al -- promised to deliver the Games for just over £2 billion, a rather important commitment that fell away as soon as the bid was won. The cost is now expected to be in excess of £9 billion, so Lord Coe is not in any position to demand that other people keep their promises.

Even the stadium itself represents some new Olympian apotheosis of overspending. For an estimated £537 million, the organising committee is delivering a stadium that has only 25,000 permanent seats, and has no permanent toilets or concession stands! Given that those crucial facilities will presumably be unbolted and trucked away after the Games, it's not clear how much it would cost UK Athletics to stage future events in the stadium, even if it did keep control of it.

Almost every Olympic stadium turns out to be a huge white elephant unless it's converted for regular use in another sport. You just have to look to North America for proof. In Atlanta the Games stadium was largely ripped down in order to convert it for baseball use. In Montreal the Olympic Stadium was a disaster from the outset. Its retractable roof never worked. It too was used mainly for baseball after the Games, but without any real effort to make it suitable, so that it became notorious as the worst place in the world to watch a game. As a direct result, Montreal no longer has a baseball team -- it moved to DC -- and the Olympic stadium gets used no more than once or twice a year.