Olympic Stadium Shambles

Following the news that the decision on the future use of the Olympic Stadium has been postponed it got me questioning as to why it is only now that a decision is being made on this…

The 80,000 seater stadium development got off to a good start with its construction officially starting 3 months ahead of schedule in May 2008. The intention of creating a sustainable centerpiece for the 2012 games that would also have a legacy way beyond the Olympics and subsequent Paralympics later in the year. A key feature of the design was the ability to dismantle the upper tier of the stadium and reduce the capacity to around 25,000, ensuring that the stadium was a financially viable athletics venue post-games. Nice try, but a massive failing as there was no interest in using the stadium with a reduced 25,000 capacity. Now, it appears that there are only two options on the table for the stadium’s future, both coming from Premiership clubs, West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur.

West Ham United, in conjunction with Newham Council propose to retain the athletics track and turn the stadium into a multi-sport complex, maintaining the promises made by Lord Coe during the Olympic bid in Singapore back in 2005. Tottenham Hotspur, in partnership with AEG on the other hand, want to completely demolish the stadium and build a purpose-built football stadium whilst also promising to invest in the redevelopment of Crystal Palace to maintain the athletics legacy. Both of these options in my opinion are fundamentally flawed, you either have a football stadium that ends up quieter and more lifeless than the Highbury library, or you waste £527 million of tax payers money by destroying something that was temporarily used for only a few of months, whilst also breaking the promises made by an English Lord in front of the whole world. The real crux of the issue stems back to the architect’s design or the remit given on which to base the design. Let’s face it, the only sport in the UK that can sustain a commercially viable stadium of that magnitude is football, therefore the design of the stadium should have been based on the co-existence of athletics AND football from the start. Surely in an era where we can change the whole exterior of a stadium at the flick of a switch depending on who is using it (Allianz-Arena, Munich, Germany) or automatically switch the playing surface completely, dependent on the sport being played there (Sapporo Dome, Sapporo, Japan), we can build a stadium that can successfully host athletics and football!

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