London 2012 is confident of winning the bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games reports the Telegraph. So confident that according to the newspaper the bid group announced Wednesday night that bid head Sebastian Coe has been confirmed as Games organizer and Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport would remain at the department to oversee the organization of the Games.
A highly placed source from London’s bid team told the Telegraph Wednesday night, “the momentum is with London. In the last few weeks the tide has begun to turn in London’s favour and there is every hope that this will take us to victory on Wednesday”.
Meanwhile Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that London’s bid for the Games stands apart from its four rivals because of the long-term benefits the Games would offer Britain and the capital city.
In an interview with several news agencies Blair said, “we’re bidding not just for the 17 days or three weeks that the Games are on – we’re bidding for the time before and after. If there is a unique selling point for London it is the legacy”.
Mike Lee, director of communications and public affairs told the Deccan Herald recently that the legacy the Olympics will leave behind will include five new sporting facilities, the London Olympics Institute, a High Technology Centre and the largest urban park created in Europe, as well as socio-economic perks like 9000 new homes, 12,000 new jobs, opportunities in education, and travel and a sporting spirit.
The bid is centred on the regeneration of a run-down area of east London, where a 200-hectare plot of land would be transformed into a main Olympic precinct and one of the largest urban parks in Europe”.
Blair said, “everybody I speak to says the London bid has gone very well and is superbly placed in terms of the technical bid. But what I have learned about things like this is not to speculate…there’s no point of me trying to turn myself into an informal bookie, because I don’t know”.
Meanwhile London is making sure its residents know that the city is bidding for the 2012 Games. The Olympic rings are on the walls, tubes, train stations, tourist brochures and even in plays staged at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
It appears there’s nowhere in London one can go without running into a part of the campaign asking citizens to back the bid and “Make Britain Proud”.
