Why London must bid for Olympics

Manchester is bathing as happily as a sparrow in a puddle - or it would if there were any urban sparrows any more - in the well-deserved praise it's won for the triumphant Commonwealth Games.

They were an ornament to the Queen's Jubilee year. They gave a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. And they bequeathed some handy bits of urban regeneration, including a new stadium for Manchester City.

This all leaves London with a challenge it must rise to. With these games, Manchester overcame the doubters. London must gear itself up to do the same, or better, with the 2012 Olympic Games, for which the planning must start now. By next year, cities worldwide have to throw their hats into the ring if they wish the International Olympic Committee to consider them for those games. It will be scandalous if London can't get its act together in time. There's everything to play for.

In the recent history of sports organisation, London is known for failure heaped upon failure. Consider the will o' the wisp of the Picketts Lock athletics scheme. Consider the Art Deco spectre that is Wembley. These ghosts must be laid. London last hosted the Olympic Games in 1948, when they were a pleasant, non-razzmatazz, low-key event. Not any more. But London must show it can get such a 21st century high-wire act together.

A city is about more than its stock market and its pavement cafÈs. It's about more than its theatres and art galleries. It's also about circuses. In today's world, the greatest circuses - our very own Colosseum spectacles, and almost as cruel as anything Nero put on - are the big international sporting tournaments. Of these, the soccer World Cup and the Olympics are the twin peaks. London failed dismally in its bid for the 2006 World Cup. It must now scale Mount Olympus.

The good news is that the Government, Ken Livingstone and the British Olympic Committee have jointly commissioned a £400,000 feasibility study.

The mixed news is that Arup Consultants state that the upshot could be a profit of £100 million or a loss of £150 million. Not surprisingly, the Chancellor is said to be clutching his shekels to his chest.

But by 2012 we could be two or three Prime Ministers, and a couple of London Mayors, into the future. This is not just a Blair or Livingstone project. If it were, I would say: "Forget it now." On the Greenwich peninsula, expensively rotting away, we have Tony Blair's version of a grand project. Enough said.

AT City Hall, we have a man whose main skill lies in political confrontation. Think of the time he has wasted trying to twist the Government's elbow over how to finance the Tube. Think of his misguided passion for a socalled "congestion charge": really just a way to force Londoners into providing extra finance for a Mayor to whom existing legislation denies the right to levy other taxes.

Next year, this may turn out to be Livingstone's very own equivalent of the poll-tax fiasco. But take a longer, less partisan view of what London could gain from a successful Olympics bid. There is, of course, the pleasure. To watch such competitions in the flesh is of a different order from watching them on television.

Then there is the sheer machismo, the pride, of knowing that London can again pull off such a feat of organisation. And, with luck and with canny co-operation between government and commerce, there's a chance of turning in Arup's potential profit. Or, at any rate, not a disastrous loss.

Arup knows all about risk, having engineered not only the astonishing glass roof of the British Museum's new Great Court, but also the unfortunate bouncing bridge.

Long term, there's also the chance to put more oomph into all the grandiose, and often ill-thought-through plans for regenerating east London. (Livingstone's draft "strategic plan," published in June, is riddled with such faults.) It was crucial to Manchester's success that the city always thought what use the new structures would be after this summer's games had closed.

A well-designed new stadium at Stratford, as proposed by Arup, would give a touch of glory to an unbelievably grim district. And by 2012, Stratford will have a high-speed link to the Channel Tunnel. The immense watery expanse of the Royal Docks - which vaut le voyage, if you've never seen it - would be a spectacular home for Olympic rowers.

In a regeneration rescue act, even the dire Dome could be rehabbed. It's a natural for the gymnastics. After the Olympic flame moves on, the village for the competitors could become 4,000 new homes.

Manchester silenced the doubters. To begin with, many people - including, I confess, me - had thought back to Edinburgh's double debacle. After that city's 1970 Commonwealth Games the late, unlamented Robert Maxwell had to bail out the debts. The 1986 Edinburgh games were then ruined when 32 nations refused to take part, in protest against apartheid South Africa.

WITH an Olym pics bid, London must emulate Manchester's ability to rise above a background of criticism and disasters. Fame is the spur. Without the stimulus of international boastfulness, some achievements never happen. Without the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, we'd never have had Wembley stadium. This time we're likely to be up against Paris, London's age-old rival, among other eager venues.

Sometimes such high-flown boasts are empty ones, as witness the Dome. But the London Eye shows what can be done. To create this was a much smaller matter than organising an Olympics. But it was achieved through dedication, stubbornness and a clear focus on the city where it was due to be erected.

An Olympics bid for London requires all these virtues. It also needs the right, intelligent, wily, unstoppable fanatic in charge. We've only a few months to find him or her. Send out search parties now.