West Ham set to win Olympic Stadium bid
West Ham Football Club are tipped to have secured backing to take over the Olympic Stadium site in London after the London 2012 Olympics, ahead of rival club Tottenham Hotspur.
Ahead of the expected announcement on Friday, it appears that West Ham will have secured enough support from executives of the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) to take over the running of the main stadium site after 2012.
The OPLC board will now be encouraged to support this view in the official announcement on Friday before the final decision is made by Mayor Boris Johnson and the Government. Conscious of the backlash from taxpayers, ministers are expected to support West Ham’s bid thanks to its sympathy to the original Olympic site proposal.
Although the decision is now widely expected to go in West Ham’s favour, a spokesperson for the OPLC said that it was far from decided yet.
“It is pure speculation to say that a decision has been made. Our board meets on Friday. There will be presentations by OPLC officers of both bids and a vote to recommend a preferred bidder,” he said.
Legacy
West Ham’s bid has always maintained its commitment to continuing the legacy proposed in the original bid for the site – to remain a major athletics venue for the UK in summer months.
The other major bidder, Tottenham Hotspur, has submitted a full redevelopment of the site that would result in a brand new, ‘football-friendly’ stadium, citing other Olympic stadiums, or stadia with running tracks, as unsuitable for the game.
Tottenham Manager Harry Redknapp made it clear from early on that he would not support a track-based bid.
“The club need a bigger stadium to push on but if the Chairman said we had to go there and have a running track I wouldn’t see it as a good idea, I’d be totally against that,” he said.
Tottenham, with partners AEG, proposes to use some of the existing Olympic stadium structure to fully refurbish the historic site of UK Athletics, Crystal Palace. This proposal has not welcomed support from members of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The IAAF President, Lamine Diack, has declared that the Olympics would have been won on “a big lie” if the OPLC went with the Tottenham bid.
President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Jacques Rogge, has also shown his support for the West Ham bid.
“We would favour a solution where there would be a track legacy, that goes without saying,” he said.
A major part of the winning 2012 bid was the ambition to create genuine legacies for athletics, swimming and other Olympic sports following the London 2012 games on the Stratford site.