Barking Bids To Host 2012 Shooting
Barking & Dagenham Council has made a bid to host the Olympic shooting competition at the 2012 Games by claiming a move to a site in its borough could save more than £10m.
London 2012 organisers are in talks on whether to move the event from its proposed site at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich.
Remaining at the south London venue is the preferred option for the Games’ organisers, while British Shooting backs Surrey’s Bisley.
However Barking and Dagenham Council’s chief executive Rob Whiteman believes a new option, Barking Riverside, is the ‘safest bet’.
He stated: ‘London 2012 must be about lasting legacy and regeneration. We are in the heart of the East End and it would seem odd to me for Barking and Dagenham to not benefit from the Olympics coming to east London.
‘By bringing the shooting event here we would be able to create real interest in the Olympics in the borough and create a shooting venue that local people can use after the Games.’
The 350-acre plot, which occupies a 2km strip on the Thames near the Ford car plant in Dagenham, only joined the race to host the shooting when the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), the agency responsible for the Games’ infrastructure, asked Barking and Dagenham to come up with a fall-back plan last autumn.
Plans to stage the competition in Woolwich have infuriated the shooting lobby from the beginning as the proposed venue is a temporary 7,500-seat structure that will be taken down after the Games have finished.
Using temporary venues was a key aspect of London’s original bid as it was intended to keep costs down and reduce the risk of leaving behind ‘white elephants’ – something that has plagued previous Games and caused concern at International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters.
But as costs at Woolwich have risen – from an initial quote of £30m to a latest estimate of £42m – the logic of spending so much on a building that will only be used for a month has been increasingly called into question.
This has renewed hope among shooting enthusiasts that Bisley, the spiritual home of British shooting and the venue for the 1908 Olympic competition, will get the nod.
The 3,000-acre site was London 2012’s original choice for the shooting competition but lost favour when it became clear it needed a major upgrade and the IOC and international shooting federation had their hearts set on a location closer to the main Olympic hub.
Bisley’s backers, however, say the competitors can all be accommodated on site and point out that a number of other sports, such as canoeing, rowing and sailing, are being staged away from Stratford. They also claim that improving Bisley’s facilities will cost only £28m.
This figure is £2m less than Whiteman’s proposal for Barking Riverside but his site is less than five miles from Stratford, with good transport links.
