OK Tony, who really pulled the plug?

Yesterday, international athletics officials accused Caborn of a patronising attitude during a meeting at which he and Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell tried to persuade IAAF president Lamine Diack, a former Senegalese government minister, to re-assign the championships to Sheffield. Diack was said to be 'deeply insulted' at Caborn's offer 'to provide bursaries to you Africans at our new training centre at Sheffield'.

One official at the meeting said Caborn 'acted like some colonial governor from the 19th Century'. When Diack objected, Caborn is said to have excused himself on the grounds of his former membership of the anti-apartheid movement.

The gaffe was compounded for the IAAF delegation by Caborn's other offer to make arrangements to take IAAF delegates' partners shopping in Harrods if it would like to hold its pre-championships congress in London, an offer one person present said was met with 'incredulity'. He added: 'Some were smiling openly with embarrassment.'

Robert Stinson, Britain's representative on the IAAF council and its treasurer, is writing to the Prime Minister questioning the manner in which the Minister dealt with international sporting officials. Stinson said: 'I am distraught.'

Others believe that Caborn was the chosen fall guy for a Government U-turn on Picketts Lock which began with the sacking of Culture Secretary Chris Smith and Sports Minister Kate Hoey after the election.

Caborn told me last week: 'It's not fair to apportion blame but we took the view from the start that we had three problems to sort - the Commonwealth Games, Wembley and Picketts Lock.'

The Carter Report did the dirty work of building a case. One person closely involved in financing Picketts Lock, who was interviewed by Carter's consultancy team, said: 'He didn't seem interested in anything positive I had to say. He gave me just 15 minutes of his time.'

Yet when Caborn used Carter's estimate of £112million to proclaim that Picketts Lock had become too expensive, he could not have been aware that the original estimate given to Smith in March 2000 before he fronted London's original bid was £122m and was on file in his office.

Three leading companies, one involved in the building of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, were brought together by Sport England to calculate the cost of a 50,000- seat stadium to be converted later to 20,000. They detailed it at £122,234,904, including £11.1m for inflation and £9.6m for contingencies, profit and management charges.

The document was given to Smith as a briefing for a meeting on March 21, 2000, and the figure was part of his decision to offer Picketts Lock to the IAAF at the presentation of the bid nine days later.

The official wondered: 'If that was fine then, how come the £112m Carter estimates now is not?'

Caborn's other claim, that Carter said £100m would be needed for infrastructure changes to road and rail at Picketts Lock, is also denied by his critics, who insist that no changes were planned or necessary, and that they always worked on the basis that they would not be possible.

The attempt by Hatton and UK Athletics chairman David Hemery to make the Prime Minister aware this week of the potential damage to his reputation by the apparent breaking of his written promises, in the hope of changing the decision on Picketts Lock, may fall on deaf ears.

Indeed, they may find that the decision to kill the project came from the very top.