November 06, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 24, 1428

NEW YORK, Nov 5: World record holder Paula Radcliffe’s sprint-finish victory in the New York Marathon on Sunday is the type of moment that Sebastian Coe is aiming to see replicated when the 2012 Olympic Games open in London.

“I’m less focused on whether we’re fourth in the medals table or eighth. What I want are big British moments,” Coe, the chairman of the London 2012 organising committee, said in an interview near the marathon’s Central Park finish.

“I want great British moments that live in the memory of people for generations to come, that we can keep flicking the video back to. This is the aspiration.

“A medals table for me is meaningful in one way (in) that every medal is a role model and I want every role model to be the catalyst for 10,000 people coming into a sport that perhaps would not have taken it up if they had not witnessed that moment.”

Coe said he realised the Games were now fast approaching and his intent was to provide an event that lasted well beyond the 16 days of sporting competition.

“When we came back from Singapore it was seven years (until the opening),” he added.

“A few weeks ago we celebrated five years out. We’ve made a very good start. That’s not said with a vestige of complacency. This is the most complex piece of management any city can undertake.

“The International Olympic Committee has given us a very good clean bill of health. If you look at the construction side of it, construction teams have met every benchmark so far.

“The big thing is to maintain that momentum.”

Former Olympic champion Coe said he was consumed by the legacy of the Games, which he classed as “hard” in the form of sporting facilities, and “soft”, which could be classified as an increase in sporting interest and participation.“London is a big city that has actually fallen behind other big world cities in terms of the kinds of facilities you would expect to have for a city of seven and a half million people.

“We have actually only one 50-metre swimming pool. We do not have a cycling centre. We have not really got a purpose built track and field facility.

“So the hard legacy for London involves leaving facilities our city probably should have had 30 or 40 years ago.”

Coe, however, added in reference to plans to reduce the capacities of the flagship Olympic stadium and of the aquatic centre at the conclusion of the Games would ensure there would be no white elephants.

“There’s no justification for leaving an 80,000-seat stadium. The aquatic centre is being designed... so we are not left with a centre in a city with 20,000 seats that once in a decade can attract an event that can justify that existence.

“We are not leaving facilities that local communities can only at best press their noses up against.”

The “softer legacy” may be more challenging, he said.

“I don’t think you can describe a Games as being a great Games until you look to see what that city or that country has done with them for the next five or 10 years.

“What have you done to levels of participation? Have you engendered a once and for all shift in public attitude toward health-related fitness, and have you a greater footfall in athletics clubs, in sport?

“What is it that you leave behind, that you can discernibly say is different because you had the Games. If you can not say that, I do not think that’s good enough.”—Reuters