At the end of a difficult week for LOCOG, in which former Olympic Delivery Authority chairman Jack Lemley claimed he resigned because of political squabbling and fears of spiralling costs, Coe said any proposed use of the stadium by a soccer club would be on condition that an athletics track was retained.

 

The Sports Minister Richard Caborn said last month that Premier League club West Ham United had been in discussions about moving to the 80,000-seat stadium after the event.

 

"We made a very strong commitment in Singapore that this would be a track-and-field legacy," Coe told the BBC today.

 

 

 

"It's vital that we are able to progress this on the basis that we understand what the legacy is.

 

"If football wants to play within the confines of a track-and-field configuration and are prepared to give track and field primary usage and are coming to the table with a £100 million plus to make this a viable operation, of course we would look at that but at this moment nobody is remotely in that ball park.

 

"I do take seriously the commitments we made in Singapore. These were not warm words to get us through a difficult Wednesday; they actually meant something."

 

During the bidding to the International Olympic Committee, London made it clear that the stadium, at the heart of the Olympic park in East London, would be re-configured after the Games to a 25,000-seater athletics stadium.

 

Asked about Lemley's predictions that the costs for the Olympics would spiral, Coe said it was "inevitable" that they would increase because of ambitious plans to regenerate one of London's poorest areas and leave a lasting legacy.

 

However, he said the 2.5-billion-pound budget for delivering and running the Games held fast and that further costs depended "on what the government decided it wants to do with the whole project".

 

"(The Government) is talking about 35,000 to 40,000 new houses; of course that is an extension of the ambition and that will cost more than the simple budgeting that we took to Singapore for the costs of a Games.

 

"It's not simply about several venues, a railway line here and a transport bay there. Do we want to leave this as a sustainable community for generations to come or do we simply want to put down a set of sporting facilities and move on in six years' time as if nothing else has happened? That is the proper debate that is taking place."