London will host the World Athletics Championships for the first time in 2017 after Lord Coe led the city to a resounding victory over the financial might of Doha’s rival bid.

The triumph was the reward for London’s pledge to maintain a permanent running track at the Olympic Stadium. Lamine Diack, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, insisted the event would be the prize for staying true to that promise. On Friday, resisting the offer of £25million in 'additional incentives’ from the Qatari bid, Diack justifiably claimed: “We delivered”.

The London bid team, which included Coe, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Denise Lewis and 18-year-old sprinter Jodie Williams, won by the decisive margin of 16-10 in the vote by the IAAF’s ruling council.

Coe emerged as the decisive figure in the success, and his mastery of IAAF politics was reinforced by a rousing speech to conclude London’s presentation. His influence ensured London were never in danger of the kind of humiliation inflicted on England’s bidders for the 2018 football World Cup in Zurich last December.

Prime Minister David Cameron, one of those personally embarrassed by that failure, promised on Friday night that London would deliver the “most successful championships ever”.

London was also boosted by the late announcement of their own cash incentive. In a surprise move, London pledged to match Doha’s £4.5million prize money — an idea hatched in the final 24 hours before the vote and a clear sign of concern at the persuasive power of Qatar’s deep pockets.

London’s offer, which will be met from ticket and commercial revenues and not public funds, may have swayed a few voters, though the IAAF’s rejection of Doha’s bid was proof that yesterday’s decision was about more than money.

It was a victory that had appeared a forlorn hope a year ago when London was forced to pull out of its bid for the 2015 championship due to uncertainty over the stadium’s future, and it took a personal intervention by Diack earlier this year to remind Britain of its obligations.

London had made an unambiguous promise to the International Olympic Committee in 2005 that a running track would remain at the heart of the stadium after 2012, and Diack warned starkly that the country’s reputation would be “dead” if it was ripped up.

The recollection of that battle rekindled some of Diack’s passions on Friday when he recalled how even Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, had cast doubt on London’s promise and suggested it was more important to avoid the stadium becoming a “white elephant”.

Yesterday’s decision eases the uncomfortable memory of how London was awarded the 2005 championships only to pull out after the then Labour government reneged on its commitment to build a new athletics stadium at Picketts Lock.

Staging the athletics championships will cost around £53million, though the London organisers can expect a healthy revenue flow from ticket sales. A key part of the capital’s pitch yesterday was the promise of sell-out crowds for both morning and evening sessions.

Doha made a similar claim, though the evidence presented to the IAAF painted a different picture. Tellingly, in a briefing to council members before yesterday’s presentations that was accidentally broadcast to journalists in an adjacent room, senior vice-president Bob Hersh highlighted the problem of crowds in Qatar vacating the stadium in droves long before the end of the meeting.

At this year’s Diamond League meeting in Doha, it was noted that many fans appeared to be migrant workers specially bussed in and that the majority left the stadium after consuming the free food that had been laid on for them.

Privately, IAAF officials admitted that this had been a far greater concern than the furnace-like heat in Qatar, and Lord Coe did not miss the opportunity to emphasise the different kind of atmosphere that could be expected in London, pointing out that the Olympic Stadium would be full of people “who look like they want to be there and know why they are there”. Coe said London would break records for ticket and commercial revenue.

The organisers have budgeted for the worst-case scenario of a £24 million loss on hosting the event, a sum underwritten by Cameron’s Government, though Johnson has put the wider economic benefit to the capital at £100 million.

Sports minister Hugh Robertson was also in Monaco to underline the Government’s commitment to London’s bid. Following the recent decision to take the Olympic Stadium into public ownership and offer a

99-year lease that makes athletics a non-negotiable part of the venue’s future, Robertson was also able to give “an unbreakable guarantee” that the track would remain.

Coe, whose leadership of the bid has advanced his own ambitions of taking over as IAAF president when Diack stands down, said: “We’ve got the [Olympic] Games in 2012, the World Athletics Championships in 2017 and we have world championships going on at virtually every level and in every sport. It’s an extraordinary clean sweep for British sport.”

By Simon Hart

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk