Possible bid to host Commonwealth games at LS

Liverpool and Birmingham should ask to use London Stadium for athletics as part of their 2022 Commonwealth Games bids, says outgoing UK Athletics chief Ed Warner. Both cities are bidding for the Games after Durban was stripped of the event.

Warner says it is more cost effective to use the stadium, which hosted the 2012 Olympics and 2017 World Athletics and Para-athletics Championships. “The first one to make the call has the knockout bid,” he said.

Liverpool’s plan will see a temporary athletics track put into Everton’s proposed new stadium, while Birmingham is planning on refurbishing Alexander Stadium, the home of the national championships.

“If I was leader of the Liverpool or Birmingham bid I would be ringing [London Mayor] Sadiq Khan and say ‘you know what, can we have the athletics in London and we will do everything else?” Warner told BBC Radio 5 live’s Sportsweek.

Warner, who is also co-chairman of London 2017, said: “I spoke to a civil servant, who is heavily involved in the Commonwealth Games bid, he said he was going to be ‘be rinsing the treasury for half a billion pounds to put on an English Commonwealth Games. My answer is, save a load of money, use this amazing facility, which is the best in the world and make it an English bid.”

The 2014 Commonwealth Games were hosted in Glasgow between 23rd July and 3rd August but any such bid for the London Stadium would have to be done with full cooperation and permission with West Ham. When the Hammers signed the concessionaire agreement for the former Olympic Stadium they knew that the 2017 IAAF World Championships would take priority for one year only but in all other years West Ham have the priority for the start of their Premier League season. If a bid was made it would be very much the Commonwealth games fitting around West Ham and not the other way round.