London mayor fears flawed 2012 legacy

AFP - Tuesday, August 12 08:14 am

LONDON (AFP) - London Mayor Boris Johnson voiced his fears that the city's 2012 Olympic Games will have no lasting value for the British capital, in an interview published Tuesday.

Johnson, elected to office in May, told the Financial Times newspaper that a lack of planning could jeopardise the event's legacy.

A British delegation are in Beijing to learn lessons from the Games currently being staged there.

But Johnson is "certain" that work that should have been done on London Olympics legacy planning "hasn't been done".

Since taking over from Ken Livingstone, Johnson has become increasingly concerned about preparations for the 2012 Olympics.

"I think there are things to be done on the venues still and I haven't lifted my reserve on that," he told business daily the FT.

"There are also, I think, serious questions to be asked about the legacy value of some of the sites and some of the venues.

"I want to make sure that we have lasting value from these sites and that this weird constellation of huge objects that we are building: this media centre, this velodrome, aquatic centre, the stadium, and the village.

"I want to make sure that we can alchemise them into gold for London for 50 years to come, and that is going to take some pretty crunchy work."

The 2012 London Olympics were originally predicted to cost 3.4 billion pounds, but the budget has now soared to 9.325 billion pounds (17.79 billion dollars, 11.95 billion euros).

A month after taking office, Johnson slammed 2012 organisers, saying they were clueless about what legacy the games would leave behind.

Johnson said there was no "legacy masterplan" for the Olympics venues and insisted it was pointless ploughing money into the east London site if no one knew "what on earth we're trying to achieve".

In April, an influential committee of British MPs accused the 2012 organisers of lacking foresight and spending money "like water".

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