No Wembley Fiasco

Lord Coe, leader of London's successful Olympics bid, promised that there was no danger of the 2012 Olympics in London being plagued by the same problems, which affected the new Wembley national stadium.

The Wembley project almost collapsed, after being besieged by political rows and financial problems in its early years.

Lord Coe said measures would be taken concerning the building of the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, East London, and other Olympic sporting facilities to ensure that no similar problems occurred.

Quote:

"This is a wholly different project and structures will be in place to make sure that government, the British Olympic Association and all the other agents of delivery will work, and will work extremely well."

London mayor, Ken Livingstone, said that the appointment of key personnel to the London organising committee will keep the project on track.

Quote:

"The key thing now is we attract someone with a track record of delivering things to budget. I want to see someone who has done this sort of thing successfully somewhere else in the world...There's no need for someone to be learning it on the way up. We want to bring to London people who have built great stadia without last-minute hitches and cost over-runs..We want the best and brightest people who want to come to help us put these Games together."

Coe added:

"Anybody that is involved in organising and delivering a Games has to be of the highest quality and that was very clear in, for instance, Sydney. We had a number of the Sydney team on board during the bidding process so I know the calibre of the people we are looking for...You don't want to hurry those decisions because you want the right person but we don't sit around for the next year deciding how that is done. It doesn't necessarily have to be someone with Olympic experience, management is a skill that crosses all sorts of environments."

Whatever they promise, it is a sad reality that politicians and long term projects are a recipe for disaster.

Expect to see the costs of the Olympic project explode, and the deadlines fail.