Lord of the Rings: Durban's Moses Mabhida stadium |
Thoughts will go back to Cape Town’s failed bid for the 2004
games, which eventually went to the Olympians’ spiritual home in Athens. But
anybody who has attended a couple of Olympiads will tell you the Mother’s
City’s upstart coastal rival Durban is THE perfect Olympic venue – and I can
reveal that the International Olympic Committee are eager to put the City of
Bananas forward as potential hosts for 2024 or 2028.
But before we get too carried away, let me tell the full
story of this potentially disastrous move.
Back in 2009, when I was covering the England cricket tour for
the London Evening Standard, I visited the not-quite-complete Moses Mabhida
Stadium a couple of days before the Boxing Day Test at Kingsmead.
And there it all was. An Olympics waiting to happen in South
Africa. One look at the sparkling new 70,000-capacity football stadium (built
with provision for an athletics track if needed), standing barely 400m from the
established 60,000-capacity Kings Park rugby stadium wasn’t enough on its own.
As somebody who knew Durban well from my four-year stint on
the Natal Mercury and Daily News in the early 1980s, having an athletics
stadium next to a major venue for the Olympic soccer was just the beginning. It
wasn’t hard to pick out the nearby aquatic centre with indoor and outdoor pools
and diving facilities and small-scale athletics track, a perfect warm-up venue
next to Kings Park.
Barely a mile away on the other side of the
perfectly-positioned railway station, there was Kingsmead, like Lord’s in
London, begging to be used for archery, handball or show-jumping.
And of course, the walkway to the north beaches from the
Moses Mabhida was under construction. Cue sailing, beach volleyball and
triathlon along the old Marine Parade. And for rowing and outdoor swimming?
Midmar Dam the other side of Pietermaritzburg. Plus an Olympic marathon
stretching halfway along the famous Comrades route. We could talk too of the
impressive ICC conference centre next to the Hilton Hotel and Kingsmead for
table tennis, badminton and other smaller events.
Up on the Berea the old Sugarbowl tennis complex could be
remodelled and across the city, Queensmead offered a purpose-built hockey
facility begging to be enlarged.
On top of that, the climate in Durban around this time of
year is perfect for sport. And the region offers a vast range of accommodation
as an established holiday resort, drawing tourists to it’s warm, sub-tropical
climate for decades. And we had the brand new King Shaka airport about to open
for the World Cup too.
My vision was soon put in to print and picked up by Sunday
Tribune journalist Matthew Savides. Excitement was growing before the 2010
World Cup in South Africa and it wasn’t hard to imagine a first African
Olympics would follow a the continent’s first tilt at football’s greatest show
on earth.
But then came these quotes from veteran British
investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, who has written extensively on
corruption in the IOC and Fifa: “Nobody can afford the Games. The budgets are
always pitched low by local boosters, then soar.
“The only solution is to build an Olympic venue and keep the
games there every four years, in the same city. But if that happened, the IOC
would have no international clout and their backsides would not be kissed by
monarchs, presidents and prime ministers. And there would be no kickbacks from
the construction industry.”
Ouch.
The hype nearly developed in to a bid for 2020, but not
quite. As the host cities gathered for 2011, government spokesman Jimmy Manyi
revealed the cabinet had decided to "prioritise service delivery"
over putting up a bid to host the games, which would have cost around R350m.
He explained: "The government decided it was better for
the country to consolidate the gains of last year's World Cup for now and focus
attention on the delivery of basic services. If any money is going to be spent,
it's going to be on basic service delivery."
Though the bid had support from the SA Sports Confederation
and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), local tourism, the eThekwini municpality and
the KwaZulu-Natal government, there would be no bid.
But when the 123rd International Olympic Committee met in
Durban in July, 2011 the gods of Olympus witnessed for themselves Durban’s
potential, as did the delegates who flew in later last year for the COP17
climate change conference.
Sascoc president Gideon Sam remains eager to put Durban
forward for 2024 and 2028, while President Jacob Zuma is a known supporter.
But before we get too excited, consider this.
Montreal, the Canadian hosts in 1976, are still struggling
to overcome their “Olympic legacy” more than 30 years after their bash at the
Games. Sydney, hosts to the most successful Olympiad in modern times in 2000,
are struggling to keep their Homebush venues in working order. And the cost of
Athens 2004 helped Greece to slide in to the financial mire the Hellenic nation
is currently failing to deal with.
London, like Sydney, developed the run-down Stratford area
for their Olympics. At the moment it’s all smiles. But the costs of hosting a
modern Olympics are ridiculous.
Though Durban has the makings of a perfect host city,
conservative estimates hover near the R50bn mark if they are to host a
successful games.
As Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid jostle for the right to host
2020, Rio de Janeiro and Brazil are struggling to cope with the upcoming 2014
World Cup, let alone the 2016 Olympics.
The thought of an Olympics in Durban is a truly inspiring
one. A major boost for South Africa and the whole continent. But can any
nation, given the current global recession, really spend that much money on a
sporting event?
Read my first blog on this subject, written in 2009: http://www.nealcollins.co.uk/blog/2009/12/cooks-bland-recipe-for-ton-of-success.html
Read my first blog on this subject, written in 2009: http://www.nealcollins.co.uk/blog/2009/12/cooks-bland-recipe-for-ton-of-success.html
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