London 2012 Olympics: cash-strapped British Olympic Association pulls out of hosting pre-Games gathering

The general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), which is attended by officials from more than 200 countries and is one of the most important meetings on the Olympic calendar, was due to be hosted by the BOA in the capital in April 2012.

In recent years, whenever the biennial assembly has been held in the year of a summer Olympics it assembles in the Olympic host city three months before the Games, running alongside a meeting of the International Olympic Committee’s executive board. It was hosted by Beijing in 2008 and Athens in 2004.

Next year’s assembly had been earmarked for London but the BOA has confirmed that it has no choice but to back out of the event unless other ways can be found to meet the estimated £5 million cost.

Earlier this month, the BOA admitted it was facing such a serious cash crisis that it was struggling even to fulfil its core task of supporting the British team in 2012, in the run-up to the Olympics at its preparation camp, and during the Games.

The money saved from the ANOC meeting should help protect Team GB athletes from any funding shortfall. A BOA spokesman said: “It’s a function of prioritisation. It’s not lack of resources necessarily. We’ve got the resources. It’s just a matter of where you direct them and, given where we are, it’s our determination that those resources need to be directed to our core mission, which is delivery of the team and all the logistics and high-performance services around the team.

“Would we like to host ANOC? Absolutely we would. But given limited resources, we have to make prioritisations.”

The BOA has yet to withdraw formally from hosting the event but has informed ANOC of its difficulty in meeting its financial obligations. It will now be up to ANOC to decide whether to move the event elsewhere or to find alternative funding solutions to allow the assembly to go ahead in London.

It is understood that part of the problem is that the BOA has been left to pick up the entire £5 million bill for the assembly, unlike in Beijing and Athens where the Olympic organising committees contributed to the cost.

The decision to back out will be a further blow to the international reputation of the BOA, following its decision to mount a legal challenge at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to the way Locog calculates any cash surplus from the Games.

The BOA, which is entitled to 20 per cent of any profit, argues that the surplus should apply just to the Olympic budget, whereas Locog believes the cost of the Paralympics should be included in the calculation. The IOC has backed Locog’s stance after the BOA rejected an offer by IOC president, Jacques Rogge, to try to broker an amicable solution to the dispute.

Xavier Gonzalez, chief executive of the International Paralympic Committee, insisted on Friday that the Paralympics would cover its own costs and accused the BOA of undermining London’s vision of an integrated Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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