AS GREAT Britain continued to vie at the top of the medals table yesterday, Tessa Jowell stepped up the pace of London’s bid to stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In her second visit to Athens this summer, the Culture Secretary emphasised that the bid now has the unequivocal support of every member of the Cabinet and that, from Tony Blair down, no stone would be left unturned once international lobbying is allowed to begin in November.
In an interview with The Times, Jowell, who is also the minister responsible for the bid, said that “everyone in the Government recognises the importance of this bid to the country and that we will not have another chance for 20 years to win the Games”. She said that it would be her No 1 priority until the vote next July and that the “buck stops with me”.
Together with Cherie Blair, an ambassador for the bid, Jowell is providing visible heavyweight support to Britain’s IOC delegates at the Games. “We can’t promote the bid internationally until the technical document goes in to the IOC on November 15,” she said. “I am here as a mark of the importance we attach to the Paralympics and to do so in the context of our bid.”
With the parade of Olympic and Paralympic medal-winners through the heart of London set for October 18, Jowell said that “every single person in Britain can be an ambassador for this bid”. She said a sometimes cynical media must reflect public opinion.
“A number of IOC members have said one of the obstacles you have is your media,” she said. British bids have failed in the past because of a lack of support at government level and politicking with IOC delegates, but Jowell said the 2012 bid was in robust shape. “We have a number of Australians who worked on the Sydney bid and they said they never at any stage had the level of government support which London has now,” she said.
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“Athens did not get planning permissions for three years after they had won the bid; we have them a year before we’ve won the bid,” she said. “We can start on July 7 next year and will not have the cost escalation that comes from contractors knowing you have a deadline.”
Britain showed its continuing commitment to the Paralympic movement with the announcement that Manchester will host a new, annual Paralympic World Cup event from 2005, with the backing of the International Paralympic Committee. The four most commercially attractive Paralympic sports — athletics, wheelchair basketball, track cycling and swimming — will make up the programme.
There was less good news on the track yesterday, with Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain’s star of the track who won all four of her races in Sydney, getting boxed in and finishing seventh in the final of the T53 women’s 800 metres.