Wharf Comment: Vancouver games

By Giles Broadbent on February 23, 2010 10:32 AM |

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Sad but true - the gaffes and calamities of the winter Olympics in Canada will serve our own event well.

Without the money of the Chinese, managing expectations was always going to be tough but the Vancouver setbacks provide a more circumspect measure against which to place the London Games.

Of course, Vancouver could not have helped the unseasonably warm weather and there is a considerable debate over whether it could have prevented the death of luge driver Nodar Kumaritashvili but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that more than one own goal was of the organisers' making. Brand Vancouver lies in the mush.

The London games will be judged by the world for two weeks - but they will be judged by Londoners for many years after.

As we have often stated, the legacy is the most important component of the £9billion package to east London and, as we report, evidence from the London Assembly suggests the gargantuan task has become a series of piecemeal fiefdoms with a poor overarching vision.

A legacy tsar with stature, influence and steel-tipped elbows might be the answer.