Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson was surprisingly and admirably honest on Newsnight when she said 'athletes aren't really that bothered about legacy'. The former Olympic swimmer Karen Pickering also put things in perspective when she said that what mattered for sportsmen and women was that nothing, like transport to an event, should 'impact on (them) getting ready to perform at their best'.

An article 'What Olympic Legacy?' published in the July 2011 issue of the Chartist with links added

The Olympics is a sports jamboree lasting a few weeks which requires host cities to create a new Park every two years. To make this extravagance more palatable the host city contract requires a legacy after the Games. So London 2012 is supposed to make Britain fit and healthy and undo decades of neglect in East London. Nevertheless a full legacy plan, promised in 2006, is still awaited.

Two newspapers have recently carried stories linking Stratford City and the Olympics. The Telegraph came up with 'London 2012 Olympics: legacy arrives early with the 2011 opening of Westfield Stratford' claiming the Olympics had resulted in the project being delivered 'seven years earlier than planned'. Dave Hill in the Guardian headlined his blog 'Olympic Park: Boris, shopping and visions of the good society' saying 'The Mayor profits from good news stories about the Olympics'.

Mike Weed is Professor of Sport and Society and Director of the Centre for Sport, Physical Education and Activity Research (SPEAR) at Canterbury Christ Church University. He also engages with #media2012, and was a speaker at the recent annual olympic and paralympic conference of PODIUM, the London 2012 Further and Higher Education Unit. Republished with permission here is a piece calling for a debate around 2012 sporting legacies which he asserts has been largely absent.

The saga of the Stadium's non-legacy rumbles on.

Ken has waded in claiming waste of public money and horrendous environmental consequences should Tottenham succeed with their bid entailing the demolition of the currently under-construction stadium and it's replacement with something more suitable to the needs of Premiership football. So it appears poor old West Ham are still highly likely to be saddled with that "fundamentally flawed" Olympic Stadium according to coverage by Paul Norman and Amanda Baillieu in Building Design.

GLA Budget and Performance Committee

The Finances of the Olympic Legacy
Part1: Olympic Park transfer and continuing liabilities
October 2010

A futile attempt to cut through the murk of the 2012 legacy financing and accountability. As one might expect, it's going to cost an awful lot of money on top of what's already been spent, no-one knows how much, when any benefits might be delivered, what they will be exactly or who will be accountable. Plus ca change.

Following previous posts pointing out that the 2012 Olympic Park is not the claimed "largest new park in Europe in 150 years", there was some hurried hype revision and the ODA downgraded it to the "biggest park in the UK for 100 years" while other fellow traveller agencies drifted off message and settled for "biggest new park in London for 100 years" .

OECD - Local Development Benefits from Staging Global Events: Achieving the Local Development Legacy from 2012

A peer review of the Olympic and Paralympic legacy for East London proposed by the Department of Communities and Local Government, United Kingdom