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Sport sites will be sold after 2012
Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent20.10.08
OLYMPICS chiefs are seeking to recoup millions of pounds from the cost of the 2012 Games by auctioning off temporary arenas and swimming pools.
Games venues, seating, lighting, heating and playing surfaces are expected to attract hundreds of offers from bidders ranging from sports governing bodies and universities to district councils.
Sport England, which will run the sale for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), is also considering bids from overseas as part of the pledge to the International Olympic Committee to boost sport in developing nations.
Star attractions are expected to be four Olympic-sized pools effectively giant tanks which will be erected in the Eton Manor area in the north of the Olympic Park for swimmers to train during the Games. The temporary pools are needed for the athletes during the Games because of a severe shortage of permanent Olympic-sized pools elsewhere in London.
Also up for sale is the entire water polo venue next to the Aquatics Centre, which consists of two 33-metre pools and 5,000 seats. Each water polo pool, supplied by an Italian firm, will be reconfigured to 50 metres to boost their re-sale value.
A source said: "Everything that is not screwed to the floor will form part of what can be sold off. The venues will be marketed as having had one careful owner."
The 55,000 temporary seats from the 80,000 capacity Olympic stadium are not included in the auction but the ODA has suggested they may be sold to Chicago if the US city wins the bid to host the 2016 Olympics.
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Well so much for a lasting sporting legacy for London. For all the billions being spent we are getting less and less. Everything is being scaled back; yet, we are still paying the same for it. Like always the government thinking of the now not the future. I am sure many people out there (including me) wish we could cancel the whole thing.
Also how about supporting British building firms, we all hear how the building trade is struggling for business? Yet we give out all the contacts to foreign firms?
- Paul, London
