Football to miss out on Olympic stadium

Neither West Ham nor Tottenham will take over the Olympic Stadium in Stratford if the 2012 Games are staged there, it emerged today.

London mayor Ken Livingstone has revealed that the 80,000-capacity arena will be downsized to provide the capital with a world-class athletics facility for up to 30,000 people rather than be passed to a football club.

West Ham and Spurs are believed to have held talks with bid officials in the last year about the original plan of turning the east London stadium into a football ground after the Games.

But, in a bid to help attract other international events to the city, officials have abandoned plans of leasing the stadium in the way the Commonwealth Stadium in Manchester passed to Manchester City in 2002.

"Sadly, West Ham will not get the stadium," Livingstone told a London 2012 fringe meeting. "Instead, we will scale the stadium down to around 25,000 or 30,000 seats and treat it as an athletics facility."

Livingstone believes that a lasting athletics legacy in the capital would be a more attractive option for International Olympic Committee members when they come to examine London's bid in February.

"It will engage the IOC because it's the sort of facility that will attract world-class sporting events to London in the future," he said.

The mayor, whose office has agreed to underwrite the upkeep of Olympic facilities after the games in order to ensure the bid leaves a viable legacy in London, said the stadium would also house a sports academy.