International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge has ruled out any prospect of a joint bid by Manchester and London for the 2012 Summer Games, as well as any prospect of a regional bid for the Olympics from the north of England, based in Manchester.
When asked about a joint or regional bid, Rogge said, “I would say categorically no. One of the successes of the Olympic Games is the unity of place, and for summer Games we want concentration of sport in one place”.
As for Manchester being big enough to host the Games on its own, Rogge said, “if you look at previous Games, Barcelona and Sydney were not capital cities but they were big cities with a universal appeal. What we need is capacity and a city has to have the necessary infrastructure that is big enough to accommodate all the spectators”.
He added that a host city needed 30,000 hotel rooms – Manchester has around 8,000 – and an airport big enough to cope with 1.5 million spectators all flying out the day after the Games finish.
“This is a bottom line and I don’t know whether Manchester has this. That is what we would need to have” said Rogge.
