Media speculation that the Stakeholders Group, which is made up of the BOA, the Greater London Assocation, the Greater London Authority and the government, made a bid yesterday when it met with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport was rejected.
“Yesterday’s meeting was just a response to an earlier meeting on June 12 when the Stakeholder Group put forward some questions about the possibility of London hosting the games. Nothing more substantial was raised,” Phillip Pope of the BOA told sportbusiness.com.
London’s hopes of hosting the games were enhanced after Beijing was awarded the 2008 Games on July 13 because it now makes the possibility of the Olympic Games coming to a European city in 2012 very likely.
But Philip Pope reiterated that the BOA is in no rush to make a formal bid. “We have until 2004 to confirm that we want to host the games and we are sticking to this timetable. There are a lot of things which need to be answered and sorted out before we are in any position to make a bid.”
If London is to make a successful bid it is likely to compete with some convincing cities including Paris and Toronto, which both missed out on hosting the 2008 games. New York, which has never bid for the games, is also expected to put its hat in the ring along with Rome and Berlin. Moscow has already declared its interest.
Bookmaker William Hill is offering the following odds: Rome 7-4, New York 2-1, Paris 4-1, Berlin 5-1 and Moscow 8-1. London, at 12-1, is a rank outsider which is understandable considering the recent debacle over the re-building of Wembley Stadium and the beleaguered state of the city’s infrastructure.
The British Olympic Association (BOA) has denied that it is on the verge of making a bid for London to host the Olympic Games in 2012, sportbusiness.com has learned.
