A confident coe

A combination of images obtained from the Royal Mail last Friday shows a set of 10 first-issue stamps that will commemorate the one-year countdown to the London 2012 Olympics. Royal Mail is issuing the set on Wednesday to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic games. Agence France-Presse

Sebastian Coe, London 2012 chairman, poses for pictures on March 15 at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, east London. Geoff Caddick / Agence France-Presse

London 2012 chairman says the Olympic project has progressed remarkably smoothly

From the late burst of speed which won him the 1,500 meters gold medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics to the devastating finish that saw him retain the title in Los Angeles four years later, Sebastian Coe has always been renowned for an impeccable sense of timing. Now the former golden boy of British athletics is preparing to kick for home in the task which has consumed him for every day of the past six years - overseeing London's preparations for the 2012 Olympics.

Wednesday marks the one-year countdown to the staging of the greatest sporting show on earth in the British capital, some six years after Coe spearheaded a high-powered delegation which won the bid at a 2005 vote.

From the window of his office high in the Canary Wharf business district, Coe, the chairman of the 2012 organizing committee, is able to look upon the consequences of that victory in Singapore every day.

A large swathe of east London has undergone a transformation, an unprecedented urban renewal of 2.5 square kilometers (one square mile) of industrial wasteland that is the Olympic Park, which is to be the focal point of the 2012 Games.

The site will eventually host the Olympic Stadium and an array of state-of-the-art sports facilities along with the athletes village, press centers and a picturesque park.

In an interview with AFP, Coe says 2012 preparations are "in good shape" as the final countdown nears.

"But I always preface that observation by simply saying that there is not a vestige of complacency because we also recognize that we enter probably the hardest year of the project," the 54-year-old says.

"What we have within our control is under control, but clearly there's still a lot of work to do. The construction part is 90 percent complete.

"But the Olympic Stadium for example, still has all the technology to put in. We still have to lay the track. So still a lot of work to do, but yes, slightly ahead of schedule and in good shape."

The scale of the task has been immense. Coe says the challenge has been to make London capable of holding 26 world championships in different sports simultaneously over a two-week period.

"The International Olympic Committee gave us seven years to deliver 26 simultaneous world championships, and then 10 days later to turn an Olympic city into a Paralympic city. It's a massive piece of project management."

It is a project that has become a labor of love for the former middle-distance runner, who is usually in his office by 7.30 am, and is invariably engaged in Olympics-related activity until late at night.

"They are long days," he says. "But they're nicely balanced because no one day is the same. There is an incredible amount of variation."

So far, the Olympic project has progressed remarkably smoothly.

Crucially, London 2012 secured about 2 billion ($3.27 billion) in funding and signed up its key sponsors before the global financial crisis struck in 2008.

Coe believes preparations for 2012 have taken place in "the most difficult economy in living memory that anyone has delivered a Games in".

"You probably have to go back to the 1970s and Montreal to find anything even remotely comparable," he says.

There has been the odd glitch along the way.

When the first wave of tickets went on sale in April, organizers received applications for about 20 million tickets from about 1.9 million people - more than three times the 6.6 million tickets which went on sale to the public.

Complaints about a lack of transparency and the way the tickets were allocated forced 2012 officials on to the defensive.

But while acknowledging the disappointment of those who missed out - an inevitable consequence of supply being unable to meet overwhelming demand - Coe is adamant the system used was the fairest means possible.

"I don't for one minute dismiss the frustration of those who haven't got tickets," he says.

"But it is inescapable when you look at the ticket process, when you look at the sheer numbers of people applying, that there is probably no perfect way that would have dealt with the complexity of delivering those tickets.

"I do absolutely believe that given the demand, the fairest way of dealing with that was through the ballot system."

Coe also dismissed suggestions the recent resignation of the Metropolitan Police's two most senior officers in connection with Britain's phone-hacking scandal would disrupt security at the Games.

"It won't impact it at all," Coe said. "The Metropolitan Police, for all its local difficulties at the moment, is a fine police force.

"There are robust security plans in place and they will remain that way."

Coe also hopes a successful Olympics will persuade athletics chiefs to bring the World Championships to London in 2017.

"I guess the message I would give to anybody who is pondering that is, 'Just look at the demand for tickets for the Olympics'," he said.

"On that basis you wouldn't have too many empty seats if a World Athletics Championships came to London."

Agence France-Presse

(China Daily 07/27/2011 page22)