INTERVIEW
Sir Craig Reedie
The UK’s most senior Olympic official shares his views on Olympic bidding, legacy and keeping sport clean with Karen Maxwell
W
hen Sir Craig Reedie was elected to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) executive board in October
last year, he became the first Briton to hold such a senior position within world sport for almost 50 years. A statesman-like figure, whose un-
derstanding of and dedication to the Olympic movement is, to quote London 2012 chair Lord Sebastian Coe, “sec- ond to none,” Reedie is certainly well placed to ensure that London’s voice stays strong within the organisation in the run up to 2012. His character fits the role perfectly
– warmly amicable, combined with a sharp intellect and disarming diplomacy – there’s no doubt that with Reedie on board, London 2012 is in good hands.
Olympic track record
Formerly president of both the Scottish Badminton Union and the International Badminton Federation and chair of the British Olympic Association (BOA), Reed- ie was a leading force in the London 2012 bid pre-2005 and was knighted af- ter its subsequent success. “My Olympic experience dates back to
1985 when I managed to get badminton admitted into the Olympic programme and scheduled into the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, but bidding for host city status proved to be much more complex,” Reedie reveals. “As the newly-appointed chair of
the BOA, I was involved with the two Manchester bids. The second one was serious because it actually delivered things, such as the Manchester Velo- drome and the basic infrastructure for the 2002 Manchester Common- wealth Games. However, having lost to Sydney in 1993 with only 13 votes, we took a management decision that if we went back into the bidding game we
couldn’t have any national contests – we had to go with London,” he says. With this change of tack he admits
that the BOA was unprepared to bid for the 2004 Games and said he refused to bid against Beijing because in his opin- ion, “the sheer power of the political effort behind the city was unbeatable”, so 2012 was the next available date. “We looked at the potential of both East and West London sites for the
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Issue 2 2010 © cybertrek 2010
PHOTO: CIO/JUILLIART, RICHARD
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