Sebastian Coe's next prize could well be IOC's top job
London's bid leader has delivered the most successful Games in years and it would be foolish to rule him out of a race for Jacques Rogge's role
Legend has it that the London 2012 Olympic bid came about over a morning cup of coffee in the canteen of the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland some nine years ago.
The then culture secretary of the Labour British Government, Tessa Jowell, was handed in August 2002 a file by a civil servant mandarin recommending highly that London did not bother making a bid for the 2012 Games.
Huge costs and unfathomable complexity were involved - plus the collective political and public will was severely lacking, the report claimed. Embarrassment over the Millennium Dome white elephant and the farce being played out over the building of the new Wembley Stadium and Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport ensured such a large project would fail to attract the necessary risk-taking involved.
Worse, Britain's great rival, France, had stolen a march on London and had been wining and dining the IOC. They had the IOC votes in the bag and Paris was almost certainly to be chosen to stage the 30th Olympic Games, so why bother to risk humiliation with a bid that was bound to lose?
But the diminutive Jowell was reluctant to so easily sign off the document that would consign a 2012 Games bid to the bin. Why couldn't London bid for the Games, she queried. So in early 2003, she flew to Lausanne and met with IOC president Jacques Rogge. Over coffee, she asked Rogge for a frank answer to a candid question. Was there any point in London sticking in a bid or was Paris the chosen one?
The ice-cool, measured Rogge - a former Olympic sailor - replied Paris was indeed the favourite among many IOC officials but nothing was absolute. No one could presume the French had already won, said the Belgian. Nothing ventured, nothing gained was his frank and candid message.