- Jun 7, 2004
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The West Ham directors had nothing to do with it. It was the underhand dealings of the government and the Olympic legacy committee, who ran the bid. The terms of the offer were that the stadium had to be retained as an athletics venue with a running track. The result was that West Ham were the only plausible bidders. The legacy committee (and the government) were so worried that the bid would appear to be a non-competitive fix that they spoke privately to Levy and encouraged THFC to spend millions on a competing bid that would relocate the athletics to an improved Crystal Palace and rebuild the OS as a football venue. They did this knowing it would be unacceptable and that THFC's bid would have to be rejected. When they found this out, Levy & THFC were furious and threatened to sue, but it didn't go anywhere, for reasons I do not know.I think the two main reasons were:
1. Legacy, the idea that it remain the home of UK athletics.
2. The underhand dealings of the Dildo bros.
As for why we made a serious bid at all: at the time, we had no viable option in N17, for reasons related to the financial crisis that I have set out in details several times in this thread.