Peter Sissons interviewed Lord Coe

On Sunday, 15 August 2004, Peter Sissons interviewed Lord Coe.

Please note "BBC Breakfast with Frost" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Lord Coe

PETER SISSONS: Anything Athens can do we can do just as well, that's the message going out from the leaders of the London Olympic bid who are at the Games, lobbying for the right to stage them in 2012.

The former gold medallist Seb Coe, is now London's cheerleader in chief - he spoke to me from Athens a short time ago and I began by asking him if the Greek authorities had delivered all they promised.

SEB COE: I was never one of those that joined the ranks of the "they'll never get it done on time and this won't work," I always thought, from some distance out, that they would deliver. I've been in this city six times in about the last year and a half and each time I've come back there's been major progress.

And the venues look good, the village, I was in this morning, that looks really very, very good.

PETER SISSONS: Is the security in evidence.

SEB COE: It is and it takes a little bit longer to get through checkpoints, and if you're a working journalist, I guess, the laptop comes out four, five, ten times a day. But I think everybody is now used to that.

It's, in a way, if you've been involved in the Olympic family for 20 odd years, certainly since Munich in '72, it doesn't come as a shock to Olympians or, in fairness, to working journalists at these Games. I think the spectators will notice that getting in and out of venues will take a little bit longer but I think they understand that.

PETER SISSONS: If you were going to write a scenario designed to blight the event, you'd have Greece's two greatest sporting heroes under the deepest suspicions for drug-taking, for failing to turn up for a drug test, and left out of the national team, and that all seems to have happened - has that really cast a shadow?

SEB COE: It's not a good story, there's no point in being coy about it, and the Greeks felt it very strongly. I was in ... Square the night that the news started to filter out and people were standing 12, 15 deep around television sets.

It was clearly, clearly a huge story. It's not unheard of in major championship sport and you have to say that if there are more, and it's quite possible, there are always a handful in every Olympic Games, it does show that the, the systems are in place and the vigilance that governing bodies were perhaps not showing in past years, they're now showing now and actually if it means that a few people are kicked out of the sport, I think most of us over here are, are not uncomfortable with that concept.

PETER SISSONS: Of course you're there not just to have fun Seb, you're there to promote London for 2012. Tell us what you're doing about that.

SEB COE: Well we've got a major press conference today, in a few hours time. It's the one opportunity - well one of the few opportunities every bidding city is given - to make an international presentation. We took this presentation to the Middle East a few months ago, to the Doha in Katar - it got a very, very good response.

But today the press conference is, is literally that. It's in front of five or six hundred of the world's media. All five cities will be asked to present their case and their vision, and some of the details, and basically to, to show what kind of Games and what kind of philosophy will underpin those Games - and it's an important opportunity for us.

PETER SISSONS: Will you be promising to transform London the way that Athens appears to have been transformed?

SEB COE: I don't ever want an Olympic Games - as somebody who's been involved in the Olympic movement, as somebody who's competed, worked as a working broadcaster in them - I never want an Olympic Games just to simply pass through a city and leave no lasting impression.

And if we were lucky enough to stage the Games in London in 2012, I know a Games would leave a lasting impression - not only in terms of facility, in terms of improved infrastructure, in terms of transportation, it would actually leave a soft legacy - the legacy that allows our youngsters to have role models in their own backyard, to adopt health-related lifestyles, which we really are all very keen on. The Olympic Games is a bridgehead into so many other areas.

PETER SISSONS: Costs in Greece doubled. You won't have that source of resource.

SEB COE: No, we won't be spending that kind of money, and also we are one of the bid cities that have now already nailed down our financial package with government. We know what the boundaries are, we know what the constraints are, and we know that we have to build excellence without extravagance - and I think that's what people want, they don't want to be left with large facilities or large follies, monuments to our planning but no after thought.

PETER SISSONS: There used to be a time when the real highlight were the British middle distance runners, and we know that one of them would carry off the gold, but there seems to be a real dearth of that sort of British athlete to cheer on these days.

SEB COE: Track and field in the UK is going through a difficult time. We're a team in transition, we've got the smallest team here and injuries were not kind to us in the build up to this. And you've got to remember that actually sitting in your own commentary boxes this time are people like Jonathan Edwards and Colin Jackson, who were competing here and were the first names on the sheets.

So, this is a team in transition - but you're right, we have punched below our weight for a couple of years and that has to alter. The sport is in the process of appointing a new performance director and that's going to be a key, a key job to make sure that we get back to where we were a few years ago.

PETER SISSONS: Just a final word Seb - how many golds do you reckon we can take from this Olympics?

SEB COE: (LAUGHS) I wish I knew. I think what I can say is we'll go home with medals, it's unlikely to be the same haul as Sydney and that would have been an unfair reflection - this is probably the harshest environment that any competitor is going to compete in, certainly since Barcelona and probably since Mexico.

I'd love to see Paula Radcliffe do it, she's got the mental reserves and the physical strength to, to think and fight her way through that course. We've got Kelly Holmes in the eight and 1500 metres, she hasn't quite decided what she's going to compete in. So, we'll get medals but they're going to be tough - the world moves on a long way every four years.

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NB: this transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.

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