GUARDIAN newspaper
Athletics must prove itself worthy of a home in 2012 stadium
There simply isn’t enough popular support or participation in athletics to justify a national centre after the London Games
The debate over the post-Olympic use of the main stadium for 2012 reached incendiary levels last week when Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, re-entered the fray as a latter-day Guy Fawkes looking to detonate a bomb under athletics’ hopes for the venue.
Not surprisingly, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, Lamine Diack, and the chairman of UK Athletics, Ed Warner, immediately called for Rogge - and his suggestion that it would not be a bad idea to “rip up” the track at the Olympic stadium after the Games - to be tossed on to the metaphorical bonfire.
Now I know I should be in there too receiving a warm glow as the embers of Rogge’s comments finally die but you can see why people think he had a point. I used to be very clear on this debate. Scarred by seeing the 1978 Commonwealth Games track in Edmonton, Canada, ripped up two days after I had raced on it, I was always fiercely protective of any oval rubberised surface.
During the 1980s this seemed a good stance to take as venues such as Gateshead, Birmingham and Sheffield were developed to cope with growing demand for athletics.
I was still indignant in the 1990s when the Olympic Stadium in Atlanta was designed to be reconfigured for baseball and when I joined the Sport England lottery panel in the middle of that decade the hot potato was Wembley. I was of the opinion that the then proposed new national stadium had to accommodate an athletics track, regardless of the opinions expressed by football and rugby at the time.
But it gradually dawns on you that it is easier to express emotional support based on a sense of sporting injustice than it is to be responsible for the long-term viability of a facility.
By the time we came to pass the plans for the Commonwealth Stadium in Manchester in 2002 my mind was open to other options and the resulting arrangement with Manchester City was by far the best outcome for all involved. So what then for London?
It seems as though the dream ticket of a football tenant is becoming increasingly remote so long as the athletics track still forms the bordering. The current design specifications are to reduce the capacity to 25,000 and as time ticks on it seems impractical to amend this to any great extent.
Rogge’s comments may have been introduced to reset an alternative agenda that Locog, the London organising committee, knows would have an extremely limited shelf life but it may have just been another snipe at athletics, a sport that has not been top of his Christmas card list this year.
The problem is that there is very little evidence to support a national centre for the sport. Ed Warner last week said there was no permanent athletics stadium in the UK that can house a world or European championship. He is right but in downsized mode, the Olympic stadium would also be too small and would have to be reconfigured again were any bid successful.
Our Olympic trials in Birmingham this summer held little interest in the country’s second-largest city and the return of our Olympians at Gateshead was met with a hugely disappointing spectator attendance.
Admittedly, Crystal Palace sells 13,000 or so tickets once a year but generally in recent years it has been difficult to persuade people to come to athletic meetings let alone join athletic clubs. Understandably it then becomes a challenge to come up with sustainable revenue options that any venue operator can be comfortable with. The London Development Agency has a tough job in coming up with a solution.
UKA would no doubt be keen to base themselves at the Olympic stadium but what incentive can the IAAF offer for the future viability of the venue? If the athletics option is successful, as I genuinely hope it is, then it should be because the sport is worthy of such a stage in terms of popular support. In that regard, there is plenty of work to be done before 2012.