'We have a compelling case. We can show that a 2012 Olympic bid is deliverable'

Craig Reedie interview: British Olympic chief says a London victory cannot be guaranteed but a city's renewal depends on it. Alan Hubbard talks to him

Reports of the early demise of London's proposed bid for the Olympic Games are greatly exaggerated. According to the man charged with convincing the Prime Minister of the desirability and viability of trying to bring sport's most prestigious happening to the capital in 10 years' time, the race is not only still on, but eminently winnable.

Following an erroneous claim that the Government were about to pull the plug on the proposed bid because civil servants considered the project too expensive and the gamble too risky, Craig Reedie, the retired financial consultant who spearheads the drive for 2012 as the British Olympic Association chairman, has spent Christmas week doing his sums and marshalling the arguments he believes will convince Tony Blair and the Cabinet to give the thumbs up at the end of this month.

"Government sources tell me the suggestion that there is any talk of scrapping the bid is total nonsense," he says. "We know a couple of Cabinet ministers are sceptical but I'll be surprised if the Prime Minister has even looked at it yet. He's had far too much on his plate. But when he does I think he will find the case a compelling one."

The BOA chairman says he senses that national goodwill towards a Games bid is overwhelming. "I cannot remember a sports project within the last few years that has gained such universal support. The whole of sport is in favour, so is the business world, and all the political parties have backed it, including the Scottish National Party, for God's sake.

"This is the kind of alliance that sport has never been able to put together before. The only people who have not yet said they are in favour are the Government, and in my view that is quite right at the moment because they have to sign the guarantees implicit in the host-city contract which says that if the figures are wrong, they pick up the tab. They want to know what they are signing up to is deliverable, and I think we can convince them it is.

"But I will say this. If the Government are not totally and absolutely committed to the bid – 110 per cent behind it – then there is no point in going on. Without that support we certainly would not bid because we would have no chance, and that would be a tragedy for sport in this country."

When the 61-year-old Reedie visits Downing Street later this month he will be welcomed as Britain's most astute and experienced sports politician. A member of the International Olympic Committee since 1994, he is well placed in the movement's corridors of power and has the ear of the new IOC president, Jacques Rogge. Blair is far more likely too listen to him than to Ken Livingstone, Sebastian Coe, the Daily Telegraph or a host of other sports leaders and spin-meisters.

It is also significant that, at her request, he is taking Secretary of State Tessa Jowell to have a final consultation with Rogge in Lausanne during what will be a critical month of negotiation. "Despite the independence of the Arup Report [which projected a cost of £2bn for the Games], the Government are still nervous that the methodology used was not sufficiently robust," says Reedie. "They want to revisit the figures, because they still remember the Dome, they still remember Wembley and they still remember Picketts Lock. They do not want that to happen again. We are co-operating with them to get one set of figures rather than them saying one thing and us saying something else, which is not productive at all.

"The Government always seem to talk about costs and never about benefits. The regeneration contribution to East London would be immense. But I feel that what troubles the Government most is the question of winnability. In a way they want something we cannot deliver – the guarantee that if we bid, we will win. I think the Prime Minister still feels burned by the outcome of football's 2006 World Cup bid, yet most people must have known England weren't going to win; I certainly did. I sat next to Lennart Johansson [the Uefa president] at a dinner beforehand and he told me, 'Craig, there was a deal and they are going back on it'. You can understand why there was no sympathy for England. I can assure you that in the Olympic situation, there are no deals.

"But the fact we have found it difficult to put plans in place for a new football stadium at Wembley doesn't greatly bother the members of the IOC. The fact that we turned down the World Athletics Championships is more of a problem. But few people know that, to his credit, the Prime Minister tackled that head-on when he sat next to Lamine Diack, the president of the IAAF, at the opening of the Commonwealth Games. It was an impressive performance. He spoke to him for some time in fluent French, apologising for the mess and stressing that bridges have to be rebuilt.

"At the end of their conversation, I am pretty convinced that Lamine felt that a hugely successful Olympic Games in London would be no bad thing from the IAAF's point of view. Blair's positive attitude then has given me hope.

"I shall tell him we can certainly win. I am assuming that there might be five cities for the final selection. New York has already declared, then there's the possibility of Paris, Moscow, London, cities from Germany and Spain, and maybe Rio. This would mean that the actual voting constituency would come down to about a hundred, because obviously IOC representatives cannot vote when their own cities are involved. Out of that hundred I think I can make a case for about 30 being reasonably well disposed towards London, not a bad base. That is the information we will be delivering to the Government.

"What has encouraged me has been the reaction of the IOC members who were in Manchester. It has been almost impossible to overestimate the good that Manchester did for our international prestige. On the strength of that and with an accident of timing that ground is available in East London and that 2012 may be Europe's turn, this is the time to go for it. If we don't, then the next realistic opportunity will be so far in the future that I am likely to be pushing up the daisies.

"There is talk of Paris getting the European vote, but like ourselves they have to confirm whether or not they are bidding. OK, they may have the Stade de France, but there are problems, because we hear that the ground they were going to use for the Olympic village at St Denis is no longer available, so if Paris bid again, they will have completely to redesign their concept. But if they do bid, their Government is likely to be totally supportive.

"I know that Paris has certain attractions as an Olympic venue, but I would be perfectly happy to bring the IOC Evaluation Commission to London, stand them on the ground floor of the new City of London headquarters, and look at the map in the basement, then take them up to that nice piazza outside and say, 'Across there is the Tower of London and there is Tower Bridge, and the stadium is five miles in that direction'.

"With a little bit of luck, by the time we get to that stage, land will have been purchased, and we may be building something. London is in desperate need of swimming pools. I believe we can build as good a one as they had in Sydney. All it needs is a bit of joined-up government.

"As for the main stadium, the favoured legacy is to build a base 25,000-seater, take it up to 75,000 for the Games and then take it back down to 25,000 for a permanent athletics facility. There's absolutely no reason why a Second or Third Division football club should not make use of the stadium, though there is also another option of keeping it as a larger, say 55,000-seater, and involving clubs like Tottenham or West Ham, but that's more expensive.

"There would certainly be no problem either in staging most of the other Olympic sports within relatively easy distance of each other, using the Dome and the Excel Centre. Excel would be absolutely fabulous. In Atlanta, in 1996, they put six sports into a local convention centre; we can put something like 12 into Excel.

"The IOC are also keen on downsizing facilities so you don't have white elephants. We wouldn't have that situation. We would take an Olympic stadium and bring it down to useable size, though the pool would stay and we would use quite a lot of existing facilities, like Bisley, which has the best shooting range in the world. Wimbledon would take tennis and Wembley would be the focal point for a football tournament that would be played around the country.

"It is also important to note that by 2012 London will have over 200,000 hotel rooms, so we don't need to build media villages. We would need a Games Village, but surely that would leave a combination of student and affordable housing for the public sector, which everyone tells me is badly needed."

Reedie dismisses a leaked version of a four-month-old report by UK Sport which casts doubt on Britain's chances, citing Paris as the likely winners, as "unhelpful and out of date", adding: "The conclusion that we should wait until 2016 was entirely rubbished by the Arup Report."

He does acknowledge, however, that the bid manoeuvres could not come at a less propitious time politically, with the Government's end-of-January decision likely to coincide with that over a war with Iraq. "It is an issue, but it has to be weighed against the tremendous lift it would give the nation. This is the fourth biggest economy in the world. We are a relatively affluent country. Are we really saying we shouldn't go for it?

"I think we have won the sporting argument, but it is now an issue of political will. I would like to think that between now and the end of the month we can win the political argument and convince the Government that this major prize is worth going for. In the House of Lords debate Lord Harris struck a big chord with me when he recalled that at the last Labour Party Conference the PM stood up and said, 'Now is the time to be bold'. So my message to Blair is, 'OK, let's be bold'."

But what if he isn't? "Well, I suppose I will have plenty of time to get my golf handicap down again. Seriously, we will deal with it at the time, but I think there is a compelling case for looking at this very hard before rejecting it. If they do say no we will have to go out in the market place, raise loads of money and bring back lots of medals from Athens and then do it again in Beijing.

"The BOA have been there since 1905. All sorts of young people around the country are fascinated by the opportunity to represent their country at an Olympic Games. We are not going to walk away from them.

"But it would be marvellous to be able to do it on our home soil. The trouble is that the Government don't pay enough attention to the élite end of sport. They put all their efforts into grass roots. Fine. If that works, then the Olympic team in 2012 ought to be pretty good, so what better place \than London to show us how good?"

Biography: Craig Reedie CBE

Born: 6 May 1941 in Glasgow.

Family: Married to Rosemary, a GP. Son Colin is a financier, daughter Catrina a flight attendant with British Midland.

Position: Chairman of British Olympic Association since 1994.

Education: Stirling High School, University of Glasgow, degrees in arts and law.

Career: Former badminton player, became president of the International Badminton Federation from 1970-1984 and is credited with getting the sport into the Olympics in 1992. Replaced Dame Mary Glen Haig on the IOC in 1994. Was on the Evaluation Commission for the 2008 Games and is currently a member of the Co-ordination Commission for Athens in 2004.