Spyns has been in London checking hotels and Olympic venues to make sure our clients have the best suites and seats. With Olympic Stadium still under construction, there is a lot of controversy as to what will happen with the stadium after the Games. US Olympic great Michael Johnson has his say in the following article, much to the dismay of West Ham and Tottenham soccer supporters.
LONDON (AP) — Four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson threw his weight Monday behind a campaign to keep the running track at London's Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Games.
The American 400-meter great said the proposal by Tottenham soccer club to tear down the stadium and build a new one without a track would be a "total waste" and expressed his bitterness over the removal of the track from the Olympic Stadium in Atlanta where he had his greatest moment.
Tottenham is vying with Premier League rival West Ham to take over the $853 million stadium. While Spurs would take down the 80,000-capacity arena, West Ham would reconfigure it and keep the track.
"My position is really quite simple. The stadium should remain an Olympic stadium and it should include a track," Johnson wrote in a column in The Times newspaper.
Johnson said London organizers must uphold the promise they made to keep an athletics legacy when they won the Olympic bid in 2005.
"This is all about legacy and a promise that was made that should not be broken," he wrote. "The monument to the games and the icon of the games, the Olympic Stadium, should stand as a tribute to those games."
The Olympic Park Legacy Company, the body responsible for managing the venues after 2012, postponed a decision last week on a preferred bidder for the stadium amid a heated national debate on the issue.
Johnson recalled that his "greatest moment" came at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where he swept the 200 and 400 and set a world record in the 200. After the games, the track was removed and the stadium converted into a baseball park for the Atlanta Braves.
"It's sad that I can't take my son to Atlanta and let him run around the track and tell him about my experience there in 1996," Johnson said. "It is even more sad that kids living in Atlanta pass by the stadium that is home to the Atlanta Braves every day and they are not inspired" by the legacy of the Olympics.
Johnson said London's stadium would have a "real chance" of hosting future world and European championships. He urged the International Olympic Committee to mandate that all future bids include a plan to maintain the Olympic Stadium.
"Those stadiums are monuments and the IOC should take care to ensure that those moments are retained," he wrote.
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