Livingstone promises no white-elephant Olympic facilities
The Mayor of London has said that if London won its bid for the 2012 Olympics he would ensure that none of the new facilities built fell into disrepair.
Speaking in Athens, Ken Livingstone said that he would set aside £10 million a year from the city’s budget to ensure that all the new sporting facilities remained in use.
The pledge – the only one of its kind among the competing cities – is designed to tackle the phenomenon of crumbling ex-Olympic venues in previous host cities and prevent a reoccurrence of the problems with the Dome, which only now, four years later, has a plan for future use.
Plans for many new facilities are in the pipeline, some of them set to go ahead regardless of the bid’s success. Last week, a shortlist of six architects was announced for a new Aquatics Centre in the East End, which aims to provide a world class training facility for athletes, but also provide services for local people.
Sharing a platform with Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Tessa Jowell, Sir Steve Redgrave and bid leader Sebastian Coe, Mr Livingstone pledged his full support to the bid.
He said: “It would be utterly inexcusable if, were we to win the games, the facilities we build were to end up unused. They have to be available to the people of the city and of the deprived areas these games are intended to regenerate.
“The other benefit of ensuring these stay open and in use is that it will help us bid for and stage a succession of world class sporting events that will make London a major sporting capital.”
His comments formed part of the bid team’s official presentation to the world’s media and the IOC. The other candidate cities – Moscow, Paris, Madrid and New York – were also present to push their bids.
In addition to comments from those present, the London bid team showed a televised message from Prime Minister Tony Blair in which he pledged his full support for the bid, saying he believed the games would create a “lasting legacy” for sport in the UK, as well as for the Olympic movement.
