Barely has the idea of a bid for the 2012 Olympic Games begun to form in the collective sporting consciousness than the noises coming out of Downing Street suggest the whole concept will be quietly and, with maximum dispatch, killed off.

Too expensive, too likely to go wrong and way too ambitious in the first place are just some of the criticisms being presented to the government at the highest level. Fortunately, sitting in his office in Birmingham, David Moorcroft, chief executive of UK Athletics, the sporting body with unquestionably the most to gain from hosting the games, has seen enough before not to have got too excited. He is aware that one thing above all needs to be put in place before anyone even makes an attempt.

"Government support," he says. "When it comes to an Olympic bid, commitment has to come from the highest level. The good thing that has come out of Wembley and Pickett's Lock is that government now knows it has to be genuinely behind a project if it is to work. They can't be at arm's length, they have to be leading the way. Without 100%, unequivocal support there really is no point progressing."

Moorcroft is more than aware of what happens when government backing is anything but firm. In October 2001 he had to go to the IAAF, the global administration body for his sport, and tell it that Britain would not, after all, be hosting the 2005 world athletics championships, because the government would not underwrite the building of a stadium to host the event at Pickett's Lock in east London.

"I tried to choose my words carefully at the time," he says of the untimely withdrawal. "But it was one of the most disappointing things that had ever happened to me. It was extremely embarrassing, and that's putting it mildly. We had committed to the IAAF and, unlike those who took the decision, we still had to deal with the international athletics community, who clearly took a view on us as a nation. They were very surprised and I think at the time Britain was looked upon as a country that couldn't get its act together."

The "absolute commitment of government", as Moorcroft puts it, must, he adds, stand the test of change of government. Not to mention change of ministers. After all, the Wembley saga, which impinged on athletics throughout the Byzantine twists of its plot, was largely made dizzy by the revolving door at the sports ministry under this government that saw three very different characters and egos each wanting to have their vision reflected in events. Result: chaos.

It was the Commonwealth Games, in which Moorcroft says he experienced a crowd response to Paula Radcliffe's success every bit as emotionally charged as Sydney's excitement over Cathy Freeman, which changed things. This was an event which suggested to everyone that the perception that Britain would be pushed to host a drinking session down at the local was a false one.

"Oh, there's no doubt about it, the Commonwealth Games did an awful lot to rebuild our credibility and I think the world indoor championships [to bestaged in Birmingham next spring] will go even further," he says. "Probably we were viewed as a nation that was arrogant, that assumed that everyone will want to come here because we invented most sports. If one good thing came out of the Pickett's Lock fiasco it is that now there's a realisation here that we can only be regarded on what we can offer. We can only be viewed on merit rather than heritage."

Ultimately, though, Moorcroft reckons the benefits of bidding for the Olympics outweigh potential embarrassments. "Yes, but it comes with a big but," he says. "Australia set about building sport up after a disaster at Montreal in 1976, in which the nation achieved only one gold medal. That was an across-the-board, all-agency strategy, with an Olympics as the final piece of the jigsaw. It was a 25-year programme. For an Olympics to work for a nation's sport, you must match the development of infrastructure of the games with a similar development of talent. So if 2012 is the icing on the cake of a sustained building programme for sport as a whole, then yes, let's do it. If it's just gone for because we all fancy having the games here, then no, don't bother."

Sport's essential requirement, he maintains, is consistency. "The analogy between me as a runner and me as an administrator is absolute," he says. "When you go for a competition as a runner you plan your course and you stick to those goals. As an administrator you need to be able to do the same. On the track, we have had a fantastic year. We have brilliant stars, and Paula Radcliffe has taken our sport to another level. All of our athletes, who are so meticulous in their personal preparation, deserve as much from those who are in charge of their futures.

"The great thing about bad experiences is what you learn from them. We've learned some important lessons over this past year. Let's hope we can start learning from good experiences in the next couple of years."

Starting, he would suggest, with a non-flashing, non-extinguishable Olympic green light from the government.

Guardian Unlimited ' Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

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