Right: London’s Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Centre under construction
Games. Ken Livingstone, who was London Mayor at the time, put us on the right track pretty quickly by insisting that the East End was our only option. So that’s when we got involved with the whole regeneration of the Olympic Park. Of course, it takes more than a national Olympic committee to get the ball rolling; the Greater London Authority and the government all got behind the bid and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Bidding for success
As a member of the IOC, by constitution, Reedie is also a BOA executive and by his own admission, the “most senior non- exec” of the London Organising Commit- tee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG). If it’s evaluation experience that’s
needed to make sure LOCOG remains on track, Reedie has plenty. His interna- tional work since becoming a member of the IOC in 1994 has seen him serve on various IOC commissions, including the Evaluation Commissions of Beijing in 2001 and Rio in 2009, the Coordina- tion Commissions for Athens 2000 and Beijing 2008 and he’s also been actively
Every time I fly over the Olympic Park site on my way back to Glasgow, I literally punch the air
involved in the organisation’s Market- ing, Programme and Ethics Commission. So what does the IOC expect from
a successful host nation? “The IOC takes the view, quite rightly,
that if a city is successful in its bid to host the Games, it should use this firstly as a catalyst to raise people’s interest in sport. Then secondly as a means of im- proving infrastructure around the facilities that may need to be built to host the Games to ensure a long-lasting benefit to the city and the nation thereafter,” he explains. “Nowadays sustainability and
environmentally-friendly commitments also come into the mix and these ques- tions are asked during the bidding process. When we sign a host city con- tract, the host city is duty bound to deliver on these promises seven years later.” “Take London for
example. We know all the promises we made during our bid
and we tick them off as and when we fulfil them. However, it’s quite clear that as far as legacy is concerned – both the hard and soft meaning of that word – that it’s en- tirely wrong that it should be left to Seb Coe and myself – it’s not the organising committee’s job.
The city and the country have to have a view as major investors in the bricks and mortar. There’s no reason why the Olympic movement should, say, build swimming pools in London. The city can build them. LOCOG wants London to use the winning of the Games as a cata- lyst for progressive change. As a major investor it should have a very clear idea of how its investment is going to be used over the next 40 or 50 years and in my view we’ve got it about right. “I remember standing in the disused
Hackney Greyhound stadium on a wet day in November before we’d won the bid, looking around and thinking that there needs to be some serious imagina- tion to make this work. Just look at the Olympic Park area today. Every time I fly over the site on my way back to Glas- gow, I literally punch the air – and I’m not even a London resident!”
Forward thinking
Reedie says the IOC sets out 17 themes that bidding cities have to complete to force them to address certain issues. “We start with vision and motiva-
tion and end up with cultural Olympiad. We touch on sport, accommodation security, the legal situation, access to and from the country. Then there’s the necessary marketing and of course the finance. The completion of these themes then leads to a period of four days of pretty intense examination. “The winning city, or franchise holder,
is given a selection of technical manuals, which advise the city on how to achieve the agreed objective. This doesn’t mean
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PHOTO: ANTHONY CHARLTON
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