Rate it!

0 votes

London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton will travel to the IOC Congress in Copenhagen seeking urgent talks with officials from gymnastics and badminton.

Both sports will be homeless if London Mayor Boris Johnson gets his way and a proposed £40 million temporary arena in north Greenwich is scrapped.

Johnson - whose office is contributing £1 billion to Olympic costs - wants an existing facility to accommodate the sports, with Wembley Arena, in North London, suggested as the most likely alternative.

But that plan has already been rejected by badminton officials.

They claim it is too far from the Olympic Village, although British Gymnastics chief executive, Brian Stocks, said he was open to the idea.

Boxing was also linked to a move to Wembley but dug in their heels, insisting the sport stayed at its originally intended venue at the ExCel centre in Docklands.

"Obviously next week will be focused on the 2016 Olympics but we'll certainly be having conversations in Copenhagen," said Deighton.

"We'll be talking to the federations which have still yet to get lockdown - rhythmic gymnastics and badminton - about where we are on making that decision.

"We'll bring them up to date but we will not, by next week, have agreed, either with them or with our own stakeholders, what the outcome of that decision will be."

Olympic officials had originally given London 2012 a deadline of April this year to finalise their venues, with the next visit by the IOC evaluation commission scheduled for November.

More than the Games / Eurosport