If London is to have a chance to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, it should listen to Israeli IOC member Alex Gilady, reports ITV.
Gilady, a vice president of NBC that holds the broadcast rights to the 2010 Winter Games and 2012 Summer Olympic Games, said that London’s bid could be harmed if too much emphasis is placed on staging the Games in the east end of the city.
London’s bid is centred on Stratford, a site in the lower Lee Valley, where the Olympic stadium, the aquatics centre and the athletes village are to be located if it wins the bid.
Gilady believes that London’s bid must encompass some more widely recognized western and central areas of the capital, reports ITV.
Gilady said, “one of the reasons I have been very supportive of a London bid for a few years now is that London needs the Olympics as a pivot to make changes, build new roads and increase the quality of life in the city. But what’s happening with the bid as I see it is that everything is going to East London.
“If everything stays in east London I think it is less attractive to many members because they want to see what west London has to offer and what London as a whole can offer to the world as part of an Olympic project”.
A spokesman for the British Olympic Association told ITV, “the IOC will wish to see a technical bid which is compact and that will be based in the lower Lee Valley area of east London but opportunities certainly exist to be creative with a number of sports”.
