Olympic legacy czar: Stadium’s future could take shape within months

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Baroness Ford urged sports clubs, including West Ham, to begin tabling their bids because marketing of the venue begins in two weeks.

But she insisted she had no intention of ditching the commitment to an athletics track remaining at the stadium after the Games and hoped there would be interest in a mixed legacy.

Lady Ford said: "I think athletics will sit quite happily side by side with something else but the proof of the pudding is in the next two to three months. I can't prejudge what bidders are going to come forward. If nothing else changes, it will be a 28,000-seat stadium and used for a range of things. It will be a living stadium."

Lady Ford, a Chelsea season ticket holder, said that the views from seats at the Olympic stadium would be far superior to those at Stamford Bridge when she sometimes strained so hard for a view that she was "falling over".

At the end of the marketing process the Olympic Park Legacy Committee board will decide on the future of the stadium but City Hall and the Government, as the main funders, will have the power of veto.

London Assembly member Murad Qureshi said: "This [track] has become an albatross around your neck, this is Seb Coe's folly."