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Olympic legacy czar: Stadium’s future could take shape within months
Matthew Beard, Olympics Editor11 Mar 2010
The future of the main 2012 stadium could take shape within months, the Olympics legacy czar said today.
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.”
Reader views (4)
Tax payers will be paying for this debacle for the next 30 - 40 years. Coe will undoubtedly consider it a boost to his ego - but the fact remains that medalists are forgotten a few months after the medals ceremony and Coe is a classic example. No-one remembered who he was until he jumped on this band wagon and began reminding us who he was.
- R.F.York, Yorks, UK, 22/03/2010 08:47
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So she wants the main stadium to be an athletics track but is inviting other sports clubs to bid to use the stadia afterwards.
Sounds like she is covering her back just incase its proved ahtletics has very little impact after the Olympics has finished.
- Mark, Watford, 12/03/2010 16:06
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The only 'legacy' we'll be left with is a flipping
big tax bill for this money wasting jamboree.
"Olympic Park Legacy Committee" - how much is this bunch
of herberts costing us? No doubt the're all on 6-figure
salaries?
- Lb, Bromley, 11/03/2010 04:46
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Seb Coe's folly indeed, and not for the first time... Well said that man.
- Murph In Kent, UK, 10/03/2010 17:56
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