A difficult but correct decision

BBC Sport Online columnist Steve Cram says losing the World Championships may not be such a big loss to Britain.

After the meeting they had in Bristol it was pretty obvious they were going to re-open the bidding process.

The view obviously was that they had awarded it to a city not to a country.

Although we offered Sheffield as an alternative, they were always going to reopen the bidding, so I'm not surprised at all to be honest.

It wasn't unfair for them to turn down the proposal for Sheffield.

I think it was a brave decision and the right decision to pull us out of Picketts Lock development

Steve Cram

My personal view has always been that once we couldn't host the World Athletics Championships at Wembley, we should've pulled out anyway.

I don't think we should be in the business of accommodating a second-best option which Picketts Lock and Sheffield were always going to be.

We only bid for the championships in the first place because we were going to build a new stadium to host it.

It was felt when we pulled out of Picketts Lock, we should offer an alternative. It's only right that we should have done that and Sheffield seemed to be the right option.

Sheffield will, of course, re-apply now as everyone can throw their hat in the ring right now, but their chances will seriously depend on the other candidates.

If there are two or three other strong candidates, then perhaps Sheffield's chances are not great and I think if you ask most people, they would be very surprised if they were a strong contender.

I think it was a brave decision and the right decision to pull us out of Picketts Lock development.

Picketts Lock should have never been an option

It probably looks embarrassing and probably was. If we had the time again we wouldn't have wanted to go through that, but I think ultimately it will be good for British athletics.

If we have lost the chance to have the World Championships, then athletics will get a significant investment at grass roots level from the lottery.

This is probably much more important.

What would have been more embarrassing would have been putting forward a bid that wasn't going to be successful in terms of hosting the championships.

It's short term embarrassment we felt, but it doesn't seriously affect our long-term ability to host other events.

Next year's Commonwealth Games will show that Britain can put on a multi-sport, multi-event games.

The Commonwealth Games in terms of numbers is a bigger event than the World Championships anyway.

Learning lessons

You need to be careful when you build facilities like that as to who is paying for it, how much does it cost and is it financially viable.

If it isn't, then don't build it, which was the government's eventual decision.

I think people would be annoyed if we threw money at things for the sake of doing it.

I wish we hadn't got into this situation and the prudent decision would have not to bid for the World Championships in the first place, once it was evident that there was not going to be a running track built into Wembley.

It was that sequence of events that precipitated the situation we have now.