Coe says all systems go for London 2012 Games

The preparations for next year’s London Olympics is in its ‘killing zone’ said the chairman of the organising committee Lord Sebastian Coe yesterday.

The 54-year-old two-time Olympic 1,500 metres champion said it was a sporting analogy for his days when he was running the 800 metres as the London organisers prepare to celebrate a year to go to the Games opening.

“To use a sporting analogy, people tend to say to me that we are in the finishing straight,” said Coe after giving the International Olympic Committee members an update on the preparations for the Games.

“I tend to think that is not the case and that we are in what I call the 550-650 metres stage of an 800 metres race which was referred to as the killing zone.

“It is how you come out of that that determines where you are at the finishing line.

“That is why I say to our different teams that it doesn’t matter where you are now, your responsibility is to the athletes whether it is the catering team or the waste management team.”

Coe, who also said press reports about London descending into chaos and the city would be shut down for 100 days next year were wide of the mark, revealed 23 of the 26 sporting events at the Games were sold out and he had no worries about the football competition following suit.

“We have sold 500,000 tickets for the football,” he said.

“Our venues are big venues because we felt people would want to come to England for the Olympics and go to stadiums like Old Trafford, St James’s Park and Wembley.”

Coe, formerly a Conservative Member of Parliament until he lost his seat in 1997, also couldn’t resist a dig at England’s failed attempt to host the 2018 World Cup in talking up the Olympic football tournament.

“I am reminded that this is probably the biggest football tournament that will take place in England in my lifetime,” he said.