Manchester's success may boost London's Olympic quest

Dick Pound, doyen of the International Olympic Committee, had settled into a window seat overlooking the Old Trafford pitch. Beneath his perch in the Prawn Sandwich Suite the expanse of grass, devoid of white lines, awaited the imprints of a fresh season.

But while Manchester United look ahead to the big kick-off, the city whose name they have projected around the world has been hard at work on its own behalf.

Manchester's rain, wryly acknowledged within the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, duly arrived this week. But not before the event had established a sunny reputation.

In any city at such times, visiting members of the press – writ large in public places by the laminated dog tags that modern-day sporting events now demand – are asked the same basic question by the local citizenry: "Are we a success?"

"What do you think of our Games?" enquires a motherly volunteer in regulation T-shirt and trousers as you pause in Princes Street, and you haven't the heart to tell her that the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games of 1986, boycotted, rain-lashed, Maxwelled, are a sad shadow of the vibrant version put on in the same city 16 years earlier.

"Are you having a great Games?" enquires a motherly volunteer in regulation T-shirt and trousers as you arrive at the Olympic beach volleyball venue half an hour late because some android sheriff has told you that you cannot make your own way through the gates – "no walk-ins" – but must be transported on one of the official coaches which isn't actually there at the time, and you have to blag a 20-yard lift across the threshold in a Japanese photographer's car.

And you haven't the heart to tell her that the Atlanta Games of 1996, crassly commercial, bureaucracy-led, bombed, just aren't doing it for you personally. Although in this case you make an exception.

When, however, the question comes from a Sydney coach driver, mately turning round to engage you in conversation – feel free to take the odd glance at the road my friend – the answer can be gladly offered: the Games are working a treat.

And when the same enquiry comes again here in Manchester, there is a similar sense of ease about offering a positive response.

The atmosphere this week in the flagship venues for athletics and swimming has been memorable, although for Max Jones, Performance Director of UK Athletics, the success of the track and field programme in a stadium that will be wholly given over to Manchester City at the Games' conclusion has been a bittersweet thing given the collapse of Britain's bid for the 2005 World Championships.

"There must be a lot of people today who are kicking themselves about the way things have been mishandled," he said. "Athletics has shown this week it can be a big sport in this country but we need a theatre to express ourselves in and when this goes we won't really have one. It's frustrating, because with a bit more forethought you could have got a retractable track in at Manchester City which could have accommodated World Championships."

The Performance Director's sense of regret is palpable – but, as with the IOC, the International Association of Athletic Federations always stressed its insistence on London being the British venue option. "Life is a compromise," Jones maintains, doggedly.

But what of Mr Pound, still perched up there in his executive box? He and another 20 or so IOC colleagues have been escorted around the city over the last 10 days by British Olympic Association officials keen to offer evidence that this country is as capable of staging grand sporting events as it is of letting them slip through its butterfingers.

The IOC always has and most likely always will prefer any British Olympic bid to involve London. The British Olympic Association favours a capital bid. And the Government, through the Minister for Sport Richard Caborn, who was spreading the word yet again yesterday that it will be, has to be, London.

Intriguingly, Pound – who remains a key player within the IOC despite failing to secure the presidency following Juan Antonio Samaranch's retirement last year – was willing to entertain the idea that Manchester could yet host the Games it sought without success in 1996 and 2000. "It would be a stretch, but yes," he replied. "It would need a little more investment. And more PR."

Pound also revealed that he had been sufficiently impressed by Manchester's bid for the last Games to have voted for them in one of the rounds. But when he too spoke of London as the more natural choice, it seemed clear that this inscrutable Canadian lawyer was being diplomatic about his current host.

Manchester is not going to get an Olympics. Manchester might well have helped London get another Olympics.