LONDON'S OLYMPICS: TRIO WHOSE VOTES WON IT FOR LONDON

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Jul 10, 2005 | by STEVEN DOWNES

THESE are the men whose votes swung the decision on the 2012 Olympics in favour of London.

London beat Paris by just 54 votes to 50 in the final round of voting in the Raffles Hotel in Singapore on Wednesday.

If just three International Olympic Committee delegates had voted the other way, the French capital would now be looking forward to welcoming the cream of the world's athletes in seven years.

The French were furious that one of their most influential supporters switched sides in between the rounds of voting. Lamine Diack is the head of the IAAF, the world athletics federation. A former long-jumper and Government official in his home country of Senegal, Diack speaks French, was educated in Paris and even has a home in France.

Diack is believed to have voted for Paris in the earlier rounds of the secret ballot of the IOC's 116 members, as Moscow, New York and Madrid were eliminated. But when it came down to the decisive head-to-head between London and the French capital, Diack gave his backing to Lord Seb Coe's team.

So did Finland's two IOC members, Peter Tallberg and Jari Kurri. When French president Jacques Chirac took a swipe at Britain earlier in the week, he claimed Finland had worse food than the "rosbifs" - and that clearly ended any chance of Tallberg and Kurri backing the Paris bid.

But Diack's change of heart would represent a remarkable achievement by London. As IAAF chief, Diack gave London the right to stage the athletics World Championships in 2003 and again this summer, only reluctantly withdrawing the event when the Government withdrew financial backing for a stadium at Pickett's Lock.

After Wednesday's decision, Diack made it clear that a guarantee of a new pounds 1bn 80,000-seat Olympic athletics stadium had persuaded him to switch votes.

"This was a race with only one winner," said Diack. "The IAAF is pleased that London will host these Games in 2012 because Great Britain has always been a great country for sport and particularly our sport of athletics.

"I was impressed by the plans to develop facilities over the next years, and I'd like to underline the fact that Britain will now have a permanent, state of the art stadium for athletics, and this is something we are very pleased about."

Key to London's success was the role in the corridors of power of sporting "masterspy" John Boulter.

A British middle-distance runner in the 1960s, Boulter has decades of experience working with international sport's movers and shakers.

A fluent French speaker who lives in France, Boulter was hired as a consultant by the London bid 18 months ago and spent his time laying the groundwork for Lord Coe and Prime Minister Tony Blair to stage their vital last-gasp blitz of lobbying the IOC members on the eve of the vote.

As well as Diack, the London team had targeted four other key committee members: Mario Pescante of Italy, Mexican Mario Vazquez Rana, Thomas Bach of Germany, and Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait.

The French were furious at the behind-the-scenes negotiations. Jean-Paul Huchon, head of Paris's regional council, said: "I am feeling anger. The English lobbying went to the limits of the acceptable."

Blair's final meeting at 11.30pm on Tuesday night before boarding his plane to fly back for the G8 meetings in Scotland was with Al Sabah.

Kuwaiti oil minister Al Sabah supports Watford Football Club and his all-time hero is Luther Blissett's old striking partner, Ross Jenkins. His backing was vital to securing 21 Asian votes.

"There's no doubt a lot of the members were impressed by the opportunity to meet Blair," one IOC member confided.

"There were about 12 of us who met him on Tuesday, just had a drink with him. For any IOC members involved in that, feeling that you are part of the inner sanctum would have solidified it."