West Ham are to open talks about moving into London's Olympic Stadium after the Games finish in 2012. More...
They're talking about installing retractable seating like they have in the Stade de France, which would cover the track during field events but which could be removed for athletics events. Of course, the only downer I can see to this is that if WHU buy the stadium outright they'll probably charge an athletics event organiser to remove the seating, hence making the stadium unviable as a venue. I say keep it for athletics.
Do we need an athletics only stadium of that size though? To spend all that money and then use it little would be a travesty.
Plans include a downsize after the Olympics, as happened in Sydney. If it stays athletics-only (as the current plan is) it will become a 25,000 capacity stadium.
In what respect? A waste to downsize? It's pretty standard practice now after a major sporting event - Stadium Australia in Sydney is now much smaller as well. It's even gonna happen after Euro 2008. Switzerland and Austria are adding massive amounts of seats to existing stadia which will be removed afterwards, and any new stadia will be downsized. Their domestic league's just don't have the demand.
So why not reduce to 50k, keep the track in place, cover it as suggested, let West Spam buy it to recoup some of the outlay and then in the contract set the number of times it must be available for athletics and at what price etc etc.
That's probably exactly what they will do Jon. The original plan was written before football was considered as a viable option.
