John Patten, an Olympics adviser, warns that there is still much strategic thinking to be done for 2012 — not to mention the lax anti-terror measures at the construction sites
I had to be forcibly persuaded on to the rugby field at school. Now, to my amazement, I find myself advising the British Olympic Association. I sympathise with friends who become quite hysterical at the idea of my rubbing shoulders with Sir Clive Woodward and the titans of track and field. But the BOA wanted at least one member of the semi-detached and sceptical classes to be around as a counterweight to unrealistic tendencies.
The London Olympic dream is for athletic success during the biggest and best street parties these islands have seen, leaving a sporting legacy for future generations — and a regenerated East End.
The Chinese delivered a fabulous show, but they were lucky. They had brilliant choreography and the sort of rigid social discipline our government can only long for. They also had bottomless pockets. We are not so fortunate. Nevertheless, the chances of more Olympic medals for Team GB in 2012 look pretty good. But the odds of us having some memorable street parties to celebrate them are only fair, unless some superman choreographer is speedily appointed. The odds are even worse, alas, for a lasting legacy in London’s East End.
These testing times require firm and coherent decision-making from one supreme source, a Regeneration Corporation headed by a supremo, so that the short-term aims and long-term legacy of 2012 are fulfilled.
At the moment, no such organisation exists. Lots of individuals and an alphabet soup of acronyms crowd the decision-making stage instead. There is the Olympics Minister, there is the Mayor of London and all those ODAs, LOCOG, and the aforementioned BOA. Each should concentrate on its own target and seek coherent guidance from the as yet unordained supremo; that is the road to success.
At Beijing, our athletes achieved a medal haul that was only murmured of, as a secret 2012 aspiration, during the early meetings of the Advisory Board of the British Olympic Association that I attended. The BOA must concentrate its budget on nothing but athletes; there is much to be done. Other countries will be catching up fast on our high-tech lead in the building of bikes, boats and yachts. Team GB’s success in these sports must be extended into more technology-free areas. The secret is in sophisticated coaching, not just by individuals but by integrated teams of experts, from diet to muscular co-ordination and back. It is cheap but deadly effective — trifling sums compared to all those billions earmarked for stadia and street parties. Oh, and then there is self-discipline too. Those ‘big men in small blazers and small women in big blazers’, as some athletes describe the governing bodies that rule every sport, require discipline. Beijing horror stories of sick or below par British athletes suffering at the hands of undisciplined ‘Blazers’ resulted in lost medals; that cannot happen in 2012.
LOCOG, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, must concentrate on selling the tickets and organising the refreshments, and guarantee that transport connections and venues are open and accessible. Amid delivering these formidable organisational tasks, LOCOG needs to ensure that when the last moments of the closing ceremony are over and the last spent firework is earthbound, the punters are not left feeling short-changed and that we have avoided national embarrassment. The Games urgently need a brilliant choreographer in chief, planning that its ceremonies (however cash-strapped) are not remembered just for that red London bus, a Pearly King and Queen or two, plus some aged rockers resuscitated from pop’s deep freeze and zimmered on to the celebrity platform. Step forward an Andrew Lloyd Webber-like figure?
Clearly LOCOG’s job necessitates an effective working relationship with the London Mayor and the government, right up to the opening ceremony. This relationship is complicated and would benefit from a very firm hand. On present plans, mayoral elections will happen a divisive six weeks before the Olympics begin, when rancorous politics is least needed. It must be decided to bring forward or postpone by six months the day when the Mayor faces re-election.
More serious than this, in an age of determined and technologically sophisticated incremental terrorism, the Met and Security Services must overcome everything from highly unfortunate public rows over employment discrimination affecting key officers involved to more private inter-agency rivalries. Forget about policing crowds in 2012, pipework and brickwork is being laid now which is vulnerable to smart devices that can lurk latent until 2012. At least one person from that world tells me that there is no real integrated concept of operations yet. Someone must provide that focus and work with a semi-detached Home Secretary.
But the greatest task facing the government and the Mayor is to avoid a post-Games son-of-the-Dome dereliction. Industrial amounts of taxpayers’ cash is being wagered on regeneration and development — £9.3 billion on infrastructure alone. The government cannot make athletes run faster, but they can get a grip on the Games’ legacy, upon which such colossal funds are being spent.
Again the absence of coherent direction undermines the process. John Armitt CBE, the man responsible for the Falklands Airport, the second Severn Bridge and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, is currently the Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority. He argues that the 2012 enterprise must produce an East End earthly paradise rather than a site in 2020 that is windblown and wasn’t taken forward. The legacy is how we will be judged, not on whether we threw a fantastic party. But his job vanishes when the Olympic park is built. The government needs an Olympic Urban Regeneration Corporation with its own overarching planning powers by the end of 2009 to do the integrated longer-term job that simply cannot be achieved via legislation under which both Mayor and boroughs labour.
The Olympic Delivery Authority builds the theatres in which the events will be staged. What it has been asked to do just leaves swaths of unfunded, unplanned terra incognita between various Olympic buildings that need to be filled and regenerated. If nothing is done, then following medal-hung euphoria the inevitable post-mortem will begin: Postquam ludos, omnes majores tristes sunt. A Regeneration Corporation is essential to stop the Mayor feeling sad.
The government originally budgeted for £2 billion to be raised from sponsors. In the teeth of a recessionary gale this will prove tricky. To attract much sought-after private-sector sponsors, the Games cannot just rely on association with the talismanic Olympic rings, and their undoubted laurel-wreathed values of decency. The supremo, in conjunction with the government and the various associations and authorities, needs to drum up corporate support. British brand devotees really care about success, so the intelligent sponsor puts competitors first. But at least that can be cured much more easily than the currently hopeless prospects for the post-Olympic legacy down there in the East End.
Lord Patten is a former Conservative education secretary and Home Office minister.
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