Commonwealth Games: India must not rush into Olympic bid, says Lord Coe• 'India should be proud of the Delhi Games'-Tuesday 12 October 2010

Commonwealth Games: India must not rush into Olympic bid, says Lord Coe• 'India should be proud of the Delhi Games'

• Coe considers lessons to be learned for London 2012



Andy Bull in Delhi guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010 12.


Lord Coe says that the much-criticised athletes' village in Delhi was 'pretty damn good'. Lord Coe has said that India should wait a while before it thinks about bidding to host a future Olympic Games. Asked if India was ready to host the Olympics, Coe joked: "Is anybody?" before adding: "I am sure they will want to look at that, but I'm not sure that it should be quite yet." There had been strong suggestions that Delhi would bid for the 2020 Olympics, though that has yet to be officially confirmed.

Coe, the chairman of London 2012's organising committee, is in Delhi on an observation visit and was quick to praise the positive aspects of this Commonwealth Games. "This was never going to be an easy process," he said. "Delivering a Games is complicated, but I think that there is an opportunity for India to build on this.

"Ordinary Indians are very proud the Games are here and so they should be. This has been a big moment for India."

Coe picked out the athletes' village and the improvements to the local transport infrastructure as being two key areas which London could learn from ahead of the 2012 Olympics. "I take my lead from the athletes," he said. "I spent a lot of time in the village yesterday and I spoke to a lot of different people from a lot of different countries and actually they are saying a lot of good things."

"I am not going to sit here and say that it [the Commonwealth Games] hasn't been without its challenges but again you take your lead from the athletes. They are the people that matter and they were reporting that the village was pretty damn good." He said that the proximity of the training venues to the athletes' village had been especially successful piece of planning.

Coe continued: "One of the areas we can work quite closely is on legacy, on the structure that comes out of the Olympic Park. In India the legacy was always going to be a challenge in sport, simply because cricket is a religion. But look at the structural legacy. People who live here say that journeys that used to take an hour and a half are now taking 20 minutes. There are new, flyovers, metros, railways, and the new airport. The structural legacy is quite profound if you see the way the city has developed in the last five years."

The closest he came to criticising any aspect of the Commonwealth Games was when he explained that "we will not get away with empty stadiums in London, it's as simple as that". Picking up on two of the problems that have contributed to the empty seats in Delhi since the Games began, Coe emphasised that London 2012's sponsors understood the need to use their full allocation of corporate tickets, and stressed that it was vital that a balance was struck between having appropriate levels of security and still making spectators feel welcome.

"This is not a security event with a sporting overlay," he said. "It's that balance between people coming to London, feeling that they're in a secure environment, but that they're not locked down. And you want them to come back again."