By Craig Lord<\/p>\n
LONDON, February 9. THE World Long Course Championships may be returned to Montreal today or tomorrow after a crisis meeting, which took place in Paris last week among Mustapha Larfaoui, president of FINA, G\u00e9rald Tremblay, the mayor the Quebec capital, and Dick Pound, the head of WADA.<\/p>\n
The meeting took place after Pound had called on Jacques Rogges, president
\nof the IOC, to intervene. While Rogges was at pains to say that the
\ndecision was entirely a matter for FINA, he did ask Larfaoui to return to
\nthe negotiating table "to continue a dialogue with my Canadian friends".<\/p>\n
The FINA Bureau meets in Frankfurt tomorrow, February 10, to decide who
\nwill host the 2005 championshoips this summer. Montreal and Berlin appear
\nto be the favourites, especially since Athens and Moscow have joined the
\nrace to host the 2009 event after Paris withdrew.<\/p>\n
Paris pulled out because the pools that may be built for the 2012 Olympic
\nGames will not be ready in time. Construction will only begin in 2009, with
\ncompletion then due for 2011. Paris will not even begin an architects'
\ndesign competition until after the IOC vote on July 6 that will decide the
\nhost city for the 2012 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
London, another bid city for 2012, announced Baghdad-born architect Zaha
\nHadid as the winner of Britain's competition to design the London Olympic
\npool.<\/p>\n
While London says that there will be no white elephants in its 2012 bid,
\na blue whale-like aquatics complex the size of Wembley Stadium will
\ndominate the landscape in East London whether the capital wins the IOC vote
\nor not.<\/p>\n
Hadid, an award-winning architect, won the race to design the \u00a370 million
\nOlympic pool for East London with a stunning aquatics cathedral that would
\nkeep all four Olympic aquatic disciplines under a wave-structured roof that
\nresembles the flow of water and the surfacing of the world's largest
\nmammal.<\/p>\n
The site in the Lower Lea Valley where the pools will be built is
\nalready been cleared. Archaeologists arrived there this week and buidling
\nwork is expected to begin by the end of the year, with a completion date
\nset for "late 2008 or early 2009". Hadid's team will work with S&P, the
\npool architect, and Ove Arup and Partners, the engineer.<\/p>\n
At the heart of a complex that would be the gateway to London's
\nOlympic Park, will help to rejuvenate the Thames Gateway and ticks all
\nboxes from elite sport to community legacy, are two permanent 50-metre
\npools and a separate diving hall. The main competition pool would seat
\n20,000 during the Games but Hadid has tailored her design cleverly to allow
\nseating to be reduced to 3,000 without affecting the shape of the building.<\/p>\n
Similarly, the diving hall would seat 5,000 during the Games but will
\nhave 1,000 seats afterwards or in the event of London losing the right to
\nstage the Games when the International Olympic Committee votes this July.
\nWater-polo would be staged in a temporary pool that would be dismantled
\nafter the Games, when a health and leisure facility would be incorporated
\ninto the building and more space would be given over to other use, such as
\nsports science and community activities.<\/p>\n
The complex, which sets an exceptionally high standard for rival
\nbidders to match and even exceeds what Sydney offered at Homebush in 2000,
\nwill allow Britain to bid for the first time for the World Aquatics
\nLong Course Championships. At the moment, the nation has no facilities
\nsuitable to host such a large event. Mustapha Larfaoui will get his first
\nview of the project when he arrives in London with other IOC delegates on
\nFebruary 16-19.<\/p>\n
Lord Rogers, the award-winning architect and member of the jury that chose
\nHadid's design above five others, including bids from France, Italy and
\nGermany, said the competition had been stiff but the winner had designed a
\n"building of exceptional sculptural quality" that would be a landmark
\nworthy of one of the world's great cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Craig Lord LONDON, February 9. THE World Long Course Championships may be returned to Montreal today or tomorrow after a crisis meeting, which took place in Paris last week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n