Tunnel vision could win it

Right now it's just a big hole in the ground. The track is not laid, the trains are not built and there is so much dust the light turns hazy. But a tunnel could be the one thing that makes or breaks London's Olympic bid.

Today the committee judging the capital's attempt to stage the 2012 Games boarded a fleet of Land Rovers and were driven the length of the five-mile tunnel to see for themselves whether London is up to the job of ferrying thousands of athletes and millions of spectators across the city to the Olympic Park in Stratford.

Hours before the committee the Evening Standard got there first. Along with a small group of invited guests, we took the journey that could leave the group from the International Olympic Committee indelibly impressed - or wondering whether they should just give the Games to Paris.

When the track is finished (courtesy of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) and the Japanese bullet trains have arrived from Hitachi, the journey from St Pancras to Stratford on the Olympic Javelin service will take a breathtaking seven

minutes. The people behind the link call it "the fastest track event in the world".

Today, with a convoy of eight Land Rover Discoveries instead of a superfast train, the journey took a little longer than that.

From the time our Land Rover edged forward into the mouth of the tunnel until the moment it emerged into the massive concrete canyon they call the Stratford Box it took a few seconds under 18 minutes.

But that was crawling along at a mere 15mph, the drivers - all ex-police - taking care not to scrape their mirrors on the concrete walls no more than 18 inches away.

Given that the trains are capable of speeds of up to 140mph, their capacity to do the journey in little more time than it took Matthew Pinsent and his boys to win gold would

seem in little doubt.

All the 13-strong evaluation committee had to do was exercise a little imagination.

Their journey today started at Stratford, a grim concrete landscape of scaffolding and pillars. But one day it will be a gleaming transport hub, surrounded by shops and offices and, if London gets lucky, queues of sports fans heading for the Olympic stadium.

Then into the tunnel, a grey and featureless maw that seems to drop down into the earth for ever and a day, twisting this way and that as it snakes its way underground.

To help them while away the journey - and there is only so much pleasure to be had in

watching the twin-bore tunnel's concrete blocks flick past - the London bid team provided their Olympic guests with an in-car DVD show extolling the merits of the city's transport plans for

2012. It lasted exactly seven minutes, a pointed reminder of how quick their journey would be when it is being done for real.

Their journey ended at St Pancras. It is all mountains of spoil and diggers working round the clock: by 2007 it will be a boxfresh new international terminal for Eurostar, putting Paris a mere two hours, 15 minutes away.

However, Paris could be two days away for all the bid team could care.

All they are concerned about is one seven-minute journey and, crucially, how it plays with one man: Philippe Bovy, the Olympic delegation's transport adviser.

He has spoken of the " antiquity" of certain Tube lines and argued that the biggest challenge facing any city hoping to be an Olympic contender is how to transport all those athletes, officials, spectators and journalists while still keeping the place running normally. The tunnel plays such a crucial role in the transport argument that if it fails to convince the delegates it could lose the Games for London.

But with 10 bullet trains an hour, capable of delivering 25,000 passengers to the Olympic Zone from central London - not to mention the nine other Tube and rail lines that meet at Stratford - London reckons it has got it right. And antique it ain't.