- guardian.co.uk, Sunday January 26 2003 00.29 GMT
The last time the Royal Institute of British Architects in central London discussed matters Olympian was in 1948, when the members of the International Olympic Committee, in town for the post-war Games, gathered there in session two days before the Olympic torch was lit inside Wembley Stadium on 29 July.
Last Wednesday night it hosted a less august, but still important, piece of Olympic history: The Observer 's agenda-setting debate on whether Britain should bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games.
With respect to the IOC, the discussion that unfolded last Wednesday before an audience of 300 probably involved a lot more fervour than their proceedings in 1948. The event brought together all the key players in the bidding debate and aired every aspect of the most pressing sporting issue of recent times. On Thursday we will finally get an answer to the question posed - The 2012 Olympics: Should Britain Bid? - when the Cabinet meets to decide whether to back a campaign for London to stage 2012.
It was an evening when romance came face to face with what many call realism; when many tried to reconcile passion with pragmatism; when tough questions were posed about costs, benefits and Britain's chances of beating Paris, Moscow, New York and others to 2012; and when talk was rife with references to an Olympic bid symbolising an overdue revival of the national can-do mentality. To the backdrop of M People's uplifting anthem Pride , a BBC-compiled video montage of many of the greatest moments from the modern Olympics - the triumphs of Harold Abrahams, Jesse Owens, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Emil Zatopek and Cassius Clay as well as the more recent home-grown golden glories of Mary Peters, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Daley Thompson and the rowing quartet in Sydney led by Steve Redgrave - caught the mood.
Our five-strong panel, chaired expertly by BBC Sport's Steve Rider, comprised those both for and against a bid, and Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, the Cabinet minister responsible for sport, who will make a recommendation of potentially vital importance to her colleagues this week. Publicly, she remains determinedly neutral on the issue. London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, who desperately wants the capital to stage 2012, three-time Olympic gold medal-winning rower Matthew Pinsent, one of the many sports stars who have been urging the Government to back a bid, and Simon Clegg, chief executive of the British Olympic Association who has ensured that London has done more preparatory work on a tilt at 2012 than any previous would-be host city, did their best to convince Jowell that she should urge the Prime Minister to go for it. It fell to Barrie Houlihan, professor of sports policy at Loughborough University, to argue that the benefits of staging an Olympics aren't all they're cracked up to be - and that Britain, if it enters, probably wouldn't win the race for 2012 anyway.
Given the surroundings, it was fitting that Clegg should link past and present by quoting from the speech of welcome made to that IOC meeting 55 years ago by the then secretary of state for commonwealth relations, Philip Noel-Baker MP. 'Not only the British organising committee and the British Government, but the whole British people are united in their support of the Olympic Movement,' he said. 'They believe that it should be, and that it can be, a potent factor in physical and in spiritual regeneration.'
As Clegg pointed out, people in Britain remain very, very keen on the Olympics. He cited the recent Government-commissioned ICM poll of public attitudes towards bidding for 2012, which found that an astonishing 81 per cent of people across the UK want the country to join the race. The high levels of support nationwide - while 82 per cent of Londoners voicing support is to be expected, the fact that the same proportion of Scots feel the same is not - have surprised even the most determined pro-bid enthusiast.
A quick show of hands showed about 90 per cent in favour. So Pinsent was preaching to the converted when he described the Olympics as 'a life-changing experience for anyone involved: competitors, coaches, spectators, volunteers and even arguably the host city itself'. Hosting 2012 would deliver plenty of gold medals from British athletes fired up by competing in front of their home crowd, inspire a generation of young people to try to make it as sportspeople and encourage school sport, said Pinsent. Bidding for an Olympics required many of the same qualities as competing in one, he added, citing 'an ability to stand up against the problems as you go along, including cynicism. And you need bravery. Although bravery and politics aren't easy bedfellows at the best of times, I hope that Tessa is going to go into the cabinet meeting and convince her colleagues that we should bid.'
What if the Government didn't back a campaign to land 2012? 'I think we will be cowards if we don't bid, and it would be a shame,' said Pinsent with feeling. 'It's an opportunity not to be missed.'
Clegg warned that if we didn't go for 2012 the land in London's East End earmarked to host it would have been used for something else by the time Europe next staged the event, probably in 2024. By that time the only land available would be outside the M25, which would be unacceptable to the IOC. In other words, this may be Britain's last chance of ever putting on an Olympics.
Many in the audience wanted to know why a Games in Britain could not be a truly British event that spread the Olympics around the country so everyone could share in the honour of hosting them. Jowell, who had seen the IOC president, Jacques Rogge, a few days earlier, conveyed the bad news that, after failed previous bids from Manchester and Birmingham, it was clear the IOC would only countenance a bid based on London.
The capital's mayor summed up the 'Let's bid, we can win' attitude. 'I've grown up in a country where the attitude has developed where we almost say, "We can't do this, other people do it better". Picketts Lock and the Dome fill you with some concern,' Livingstone conceded, but then stressed that an Olympics need not involve a repeat of those fiascos as long as people with a track record in delivering major projects on time and to budget - they do exist, he said - were put in charge of 2012, and not a politician or sports star.
Rejecting predictions that hosting the Games could be a financial disaster, he said that every Games in recent times has made a profit. That's why the mayor has felt able to give the Government guarantees in the past few days that his Greater London Authority will pick up the lion's share of the gap between income and spending, which Ministers fear could reach £2.6bn, by charging Londoners an 'Olympic tax' and using London Development Agency funds to build a new Olympic stadium and other facilities. 'My own budget for the next year alone is £6 billion. The wealth generated each year in London is £140 billion. These things are manageable over a whole decade', said the mayor.
Jowell came to the debate on the back of a string of appearances - on radio, in the Commons and before the culture, media and sport select committee - in which she had sounded very gloomy about a bid. Last Wednesday she made her stance clear from the outset. 'I would like the Olympics to come to London,' she said. 'But my job at this point is not to be a cheerleader but to be a sceptic, to be a hard-nosed realist.'
True to her word, she then questioned some of the main claimed benefits of staging an Olympics and asked some searching questions that have been troubling ministers. The evidence from Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney shows participation in grass-roots sport is unaffected. Will the £500m worth of new sports venues built for the occasion become white elephants? Will it regenerate the East End or cause years of planning blight until the IOC choose the 2012 host city in mid-2005?
'I'm not a cynic,' said Jowell. 'I know the value of an Olympic Games in London. But before I recommend that we bid to my colleagues I must also know the price.' Until the debate, ministerial concern about that price being as high as £2.6bn had bred widespread pessimism. It seemed the British bid was already dead, killed by the noises off from Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.
But The Observer debate showed that the whole mood of the discussion about 2012 had now changed significantly. Livingstone's financial promises and the likelihood of the National Lottery covering the remainder of any cash shortfall - both confirmed publicly last Wednesday - mean staging 2012 is, for the Government, virtually cost-free.
Of course, the IOC cannot guarantee a London victory. But athletes, sports fans and the general public all want to know why the Government have seemed so reluctant to let Britain even try to win the Games. Their reasons for saying no are disappearing fast.
denis.campbell@observer.co.uk
