UK Government is supporting for London’s bid to host the event for the first time since 2017, with ministers also backing a bid for the World Para Athletics Championships, as Claret and Hugh covered yesterday.
Athlete Keely Hodgkinson has poked fun at West Ham by claiming Great Britain will win more medals at the London Stadium than the Hammers have “in their entire history” if the 2029 World Athletics Championships are held at the London Stadium.
Earlier this month, a West Ham source ( thought to be West Ham Vice Chairman Karren Brady) told the Daily Mail that the Hammers have a “contractual right ensuring West Ham United games take priority during the football season” suggesting they will veto the 2029 August or September Championship if it clashes with the Premier League fixture calendar.
Replying to a post on X (twitter) speculating that West Ham’s alleged stance could scupper London’s bid, Olympic 800m champion Hodgkinson said:
“The GB team will bring back more medals to that stadium than West Ham have seen in their entire history”
Most Read on West Ham News
Earlier this week Lord Seb Coe weighed in to the argument saying:
“It’s really difficult for me because I have a view, but I have to be scrupulously neutral, because London is clearly not the only bid out there, all I would say is that I would hope that there is a recognition that outside the Olympic Games and the World Cup, this is the third-largest sporting gathering in a four-year cycle. I do ask cities to try to accommodate us. There has to be a recognition that it’s a big global sport. This is not a gimme to anyone.”
Asked whether West Ham should be more welcoming to athletics, given it received the so called deal of the century when it got the London 2012 Olympic Stadium almost for free, Coe replied: “I’ve sat on the board of one Premier League club, and I’m very close to another one, and I think they would have been pretty satisfied with that deal.”
London Stadium in ‘Olympics’ mode in 2012
Coe also played down the chances of the 2029 World Athletics Championships being staged earlier in the summer so it missed the start of the football season. “I can’t speculate about that,” he said. “That would then be a council judgment. We have a pretty clear, stated position that we want our world championships to finish as the conclusion of a season.
“Why did we do that? Well, the reason is that, for a lot of our fans, it was confusing. They didn’t quite know why somebody would come out of a world championships or an Olympic Games and then go: ‘OK, I know they won whatever it is, in the world championships, and then four days later they’re in the Diamond League final.’
Lord Coe was the London 2012 chairman for the Olympics bid and implementation. He was a key decision maker who decided the Olympic Stadium would not be designed for football after the games and would revert to a 25,000 multi use stadium. That decision cost taxpayers as much as a billion pounds in rebuilt costs and operating losses.
He is now the sitting president of World Athletics, a position he has held since 2015.
The UK Government could weight into the dispute to put pressure on West Ham to compromise but considering Baroness Brady’s politics this could fall on deaf ears.