Friday 21 January 2011

The elephant in the room

The big UK sport talk at the moment is regarding the future of the Olympic stadium.  I am surprised both Spurs and West Ham wish to move there, Upton Park always strikes me as a ground with a great atmosphere, moving to a new stadium would in my opinion remove some of their home advantage (as per Southampton when they moved to St Mary's) and if Spurs moved they would be moving into West Ham's territory away from where their supporters think of as home.

I don't have a preference either way regarding this, but what I do find incredibly surprising is that this issue is being discussed at all in 2011.  I was under the impression in 2005 (granted as a naive 19 year old) that the bid had a plan for when the Olympics had finished.  David Bond has been summarising on the BBC what is wrong with the initial legacy plans but how did nobody see this as a problem at the time?  It beggars belief!  In my opinion our bid should have included plans on how the stadium would be commercially viable after the summer of 2012, not to do so is a ridiculous waste of public money.  Why was the venue not designed as a multi sport venue?  I think it's the Stade De France that has a movable tier of seats that enables a running track to be hidden during football or rugby matches.  Why was nothing like this developed here?  Why was the 25,000 seater athletics stadium not questioned at the time?  You can see why people involved in the bidding process wanted a dedicated athletics venue, however surely someone from outside of this (presumably the government ministers outside of the process) should have asked these sorts of questions.  Maybe I am being too partisan here but this to me sums up Labour's legacy - overspending without really thinking through the end result or the overall goal (the money was there so spend it!)

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