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London gets vote of confidence from Sydney
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-03-30 11:34
The London 2012 Olympics can leave the greatest legacy in Games history, according to the man responsible for Sydney's spectacular success in 2000.
On a visit to London this week Sandy Hollway, the chief executive of the Sydney organising committee, gave a ringing endorsement of the capital's progress in delivering the Games.
Sydney is held up by the IOC as the most successful Olympics ever but Hollway said London has the potential to be even better and dismissed concerns over rising budgets.
"I think London is going very well and in many respects I think London is ahead of where Sydney was and Sydney delivered a fantastic Olympic Games," he said while visiting the London organising committee's headquarters.
"I think that there is more structured thinking about the long-term legacy, what is left after the Games for the people of Britain than we had in Sydney."
Asked if London can surpass Sydney he said: "I think it could although I hate to admit it.
"I think in two respects, one is the built legacy and social legacy in east London that will go with it.
"The second part is the non-built legacy, education, youth sport. In Sydney we were so focused on getting the Games right that we didn't think about that so much.
"When you take the lid off it London can have the best Olympics party ever and it could leave the greatest legacy in Olympic history if you do this right."
His comments will be warmly welcomed by both Games organisers and government after it was revealed earlier this month that the costs of staging the 2012 Games had more than doubled to 9.3 billion pounds ($18.27 billion).
The original budget for building the Games infrastructure was around three billion pounds with another billion pounds to fund the regeneration of the immediate area.
However, Hollway said it was better to have a realistic budget rather than try to drag in extra funding nearer the time.
"We did a budget review early (in Sydney) and I think it was a wise thing to do," said Hollway, who was also an advisor to the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and was on the IOC committee that shortlisted the cities for 2012.
"It gave us a realistic projection of revenue and a realistic understanding of what we could expect from government.
"This is better than blundering along and finding a year out from the Games that you need to dramatically cut costs or sacrifice the quality of the Games. London has left itself with a sensibly conservative budget that will be realisable."
He did have a few words of warning, however, saying that there was no time to waste in constructing the sites.
"Time is of the essence in this project," he said. "My experience is that Mondays turn into Fridays awfully fast and months and years go by very quickly.
"That's important in the case of London because you have set yourself very big objectives...especially big regeneration and building objectives.
"The good news though is that this is all very well understood by the authorities in London and I don't think they're wasting time."
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