IAAF chief Diack happy with West Ham Stadium solution

By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year

August 30 -Sebastian Coe’s successful long-running battle to ensure that whoever takes over the Olympic Stadium after London 2012 retains the athletics track has been hailed by Lamine Diack, the President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

All the leading contenders to be given the lease for the Stadium after the Olympics and Paralympics, including Premier League football club West Ham United, have promised to retain the track.

Diack told insideworldfootball: “I am very pleased with the new that the athletics stadium will stay.

“I never really understood this discussion as to why you could not keep the track.

“A city of London’s importance needs to keep a track so it has a top-class athletics facility.

“The solution proposed is a good one.”

It was the decision by Diack, a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in 2005 to switch his support from Paris and instead back London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics that proved one of the pivotal moments of the campaign.

He had vowed not to back London after Tony Blair’s Government had failed to keep a promise to build a new athletics stadium at Picketts Lock to host the 2005 World Championships.

But Coe persuaded him to support London after promising that hosting the Olympics would guarantee a long-term legacy for athletics in Europe’s largest capital.

Diack was coach Senegal’s national football team between 1964 and 1968 before launching his political career.

He told insideworldfootball: “I have nothing against football – except when it is not prepared to cohabit with athletics.”

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