The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Coordination Commission Friday concluded its first full visit to London since its election last July as host city of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
The Commission heard from London 2012 head Sebastian Coe and its Chief Executive Officer Paul Deighton along with key members of the Organizing Committee’s (LOCOG) administration.
It also received briefings from key leaders of the various stakeholder groups involved in the London Games, including the Minister for Sport, the Mayor of London, the Chairman of the British Olympic Committee, and the CEO of the Olympic Delivery Authority.
The commission members received more detailed reports on the progress of several key functional areas such as sport, Olympic venue construction, transport, finance, sustainability and environment, communications, marketing, accommodation, culture and the Paralympic Games.
They also toured some of the key Olympic sites including the Millennium Dome, the Olympic Park and the Stratford International Railway Station.
Commission chairman Denis Oswald said, “we were able to see the first, early signs of the huge transformation that will follow when we saw the work being done to bury electricity cables in the Stratford area. Developments for the indoor arena at the Millennium Dome were also encouraging and exciting”.
Jack Lemley, chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority said, “this project is a marathon, not a sprint, and it will take a gold medal performance to deliver what we set out to deliver. We are making a start on that and that is in no small part down to what was done in the planning phase”.
He forecast there would be minor changes to plans for the Olympic Park. “I think there will be some venues moved around on the plot of land”.
He added, “we will be identifying those in more specific terms before the end of May and perfecting our estimates and costs. I don’t expect a wholesale change in the park”.
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said the government was determined to keep the costs under control. “We are carrying out a review of all the costs, not as a one-off, but as a continuing discipline. Delays cost money”.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone said he believed remaining wrangles with small businesses facing eviction from the Olympic site would be resolved by the end of the year. A public inquiry begins next month, but by then London 2010 will control around 80 per cent of the land. There are about 400 complains from 100 objectors, reports the Guardian.
He added, “there is nothing new that can stand in the way of getting ahead and starting work on schedule on the rest of the site”. He expected a final decision on the compulsory land purchase order would be made by November.
The Mayor said 70 per cent of the land needed for the Olympics had been acquired.
As for a report in French newspaper Le Monde which alleged that six unidentified IOC members were bribed to vote for London last year, Coe said “I would be more concerned about the report in Le Monde if it hadn’t been widely rubbished by the bid team in Paris themselves. I can certainly go to Lausanne at any stage…to talk about the whole bid process”.
Meanwhile a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked about the report, said he would rather not respond to wild and inaccurate claims from France, no matter what their source. He would simply point out that “there was a lot of bloody hard work by people to win the bid” and that Tony Blair had “carved out time in his diary” to lobby delegates in Singapore.
The commission’s next visit to London takes place in 2007. The commission visits future host cities on a yearly basis until four years from the Games when there are two visits per year. There are also visits by smaller IOC teams involving the commission chairman, selected members of the commission and members of the IOC administration.
