Russia makes two-pronged 2012 bid

Russian officials have denied that the country's bid to host the Euro 2012 football finals will harm its hopes of staging the Olympics in the same year.

Vyacheslav Koloskov, boss of Russia's football union, filed a late bid for Euro 2012 on Monday, just beating the deadline of governing body Uefa.

Koloskov said: "No matter how the Olympic vote goes, Moscow is spending lots of money on its infrastructure.

"Work on hotels and roads could only help our bid as well."

Other bids to host the football tournament have come from Italy and Greece, along with joint bids from Hungary/Croatia and Poland/Ukraine.

The Russians, who made an unsuccessful attempt to stage the 2008 tournament, waited until the last minute before finally deciding to go ahead with their plan.

"We didn't want to make fools of ourselves by submitting an unprepared bid like we had the last time," said Koloskov, who added that Russia will have a number of modern stadiums ready by 2008.

"We needed government guarantees for our bid to have any chance of success and I think we now have a strong case.

"We have concrete plans to build soccer stadiums not only in Moscow or St Petersburg but also in several other Russian cities," he said.

Uefa will draw up a shortlist of three candidates in November before announcing the host country in December 2006.

The decision on who will host the 2012 Olympics will be made in July, with Moscow up against Paris, London, New York and Madrid.