Scotland's lord of the rings

Published on Sunday 5 March 2006 00:32

AS HE stepped forward to present a medal during a podium ceremony at the Winter Olympics in Turin, the mobile phone in Craig Reedie's pocket vibrated. The former chairman of the British Olympic Association was desperate to answer the call because he knew it was a friend contacting him from Murrayfield with an update on the Calcutta Cup.

"We were in the lead when I got the call to go and present the medal," said Reedie. "Then the phone went. I tell you it was agony out there not knowing the score. But as soon as I could I called back and got the good news."

The epitome of the cultured Scottish administrator and diplomat, Reedie was awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours List largely for his integral role in winning the Olympics for London in 2012, a process which he speaks about for the first time today.

As Britain's Olympic chief until recently, there were some people who doubted Reedie's Scottish patriotism, largely because of his outspoken views that Scotland should take part in the Olympic football tournament in 2012, despite the Scottish Football Association's firm 'no' to a British team for fear that FIFA and UEFA will force the four home unions to amalgamate into a United Kingdom association. He still has strong feelings on the issue and his constant mask of diplomacy almost slips.

"John MacBeth (SFA President) and David Taylor (SFA chief executive) know perfectly well what my views are," said Reedie. "It's their call which they have to make. I just simply think they are wrong.

"I hope that in time they will see the advantages of being part of it. If they stand aside it doesn't matter as there will still be a British team in 2012. They have, I understand, a letter from Sepp Blatter saying that it would not affect their status. I don't know what assurances a member of FIFA wants - when the president of FIFA says it won't affect their status then I think they have all the assurances they need.

"If they continue with their view that they will not take part, they run the risk of denying women the chance to get into a women's team. I do not think any sporting body should be putting in place decisions which prevent people from playing."

Hampden may not now host Olympic football, but will play a vital part in another bidding process in which Reedie is involved in a behind-the-scenes capacity: "There is a good chance that Glasgow can win the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and that would be magnificent for the city and for Scottish sport. I know Glasgow can put on a good Games."

Reedie does not just want to see Scotland do well in the traditional Olympic and Commonwealth sports, but feels strongly that investment in coaches and administrators can help all of Scottish sports, including rugby and football.

"If the Katherine Graingers of this world can win medals at World and Olympic level there's no reason why other Scots cannot win medals, and that applies to team games as much as the individual sports in which we do so well.

"I'm certain that the graph in sports such as football and rugby goes up and down. If I had said to you before the Six Nations that Scotland would get home victories over France and England, you would have bitten my hand off.

"The SRU deserve some credit as they seem to be getting things right, and in rugby and football you don't produce great teams overnight but we seem to have a bunch of talented youngsters coming through and it's quite important for Scottish sporting culture that they do as they are our two biggest sports."

The financial consultant from Bridge of Weir has joined Bill Gammell's new Scottish Institute of Sport Foundation which aims to create a 'culture of winning' in Scottish sport. Proof that Scottish sport is a small village is that one of the other members, Andy Murray's tennis coach mum Judy, is the daughter of two old friends from Reedie's days as a badminton player.

At 64, Reedie still regularly plays golf at the Old Ranfurly Club in Renfrewshire and is also a member of the Royal and Ancient. He played rugby and squash as a younger man but his main sport was always badminton.

He was in the Glasgow University squad which went from fifth division to first in successive years, and it is often stated that he played for Scotland.

"I'd like to nail that one," said Reedie. "I played at international standard but I was never actually picked for Scotland. I was pretty ticked off at the time but with mature reflection I think the selectors were right - about ten years later I realised that if I had been a selector I wouldn't have picked myself!"

His playing days drawing to a close, Reedie moved seamlessly into the administration of his favourite sport and swiftly moved through the international administrative ranks, his biggest coup being to persuade the International Olympic Committee to make badminton an Olympic event. That experience, and his financial expertise, led to his election as chairman of the BOA.

At the BOA he made no excuses for "commercialising the rings", as he describes it, which increased the association's income to more than 4m a year and allowed investment in such facilities as the excellent training camp in Queensland before the Sydney Olympics in which Team GB did so well. He joined the IOC in 1994 and has served alongside such famous sporting names as Valeriy Borzov, Kip Keino, Sergey Bubka, Jean-Claude Killy and Frankie Fredericks; aristocrats like the Princess Royal, Princess Nora of Liechtenstein, and Prince Albert of Monaco plus administrative royalty represented by Juan Antonio Samaranch and the aforementioned Sepp Blatter. It was Reedie's urbane courting of the IOC which Sebastian Coe and others have credited with gaining so many votes for London.

"The Olympic bidding process is on occasions Byzantine," said Reedie. "My involvement in the earlier unsuccessful Manchester bid showed me that regional cities were simply not big enough to host the Games. It had to be London.

"It was relatively easy to get London involved as a city, because Mayor Ken Livingstone saw the advantages and has been fantastic ever since.

"Bringing the government on board was rather more difficult, largely because of the Iraq war.

"They finally came on board in May, 2003, and my feeling was that at that time they thought the war was over - here we are nearly three years later and things are different. But during the bidding process I was encouraged by speaking to my IOC colleagues who said that Iraq was seen internationally as Bush's war, not Blair's war, and that was significant. My job was to speak to my IOC colleagues about how good London's bid was, and to advise those speaking to the IOC, and to help point Seb Coe in the right direction - not that he needed much pointing as he did a fabulous job. He understood the Olympic protocols and politics.

"There was a group of four or five of us who were out there gathering intelligence and we had better intelligence than anybody else and we analysed it properly.

"I have been reading a book by a French journalist (Reedie is fluent in the language) about the three failed Paris bids, and he claims that London was aggressive in its bid, but I think we had to be because every time we picked up a newspaper it was saying that Paris was going to win.

"We were not going to sit back and do nothing. We did nothing that broke the rules, but we were as aggressive as we could be in media terms and I think we were pretty intelligent in our approach to individual IOC members."

Unlike all previous claims for a key moment in the bidding, which has concentrated on Tony Blair's smiling performance at Singapore and President Jacques Chirac's PR failure there, Reedie blames the French people themselves for costing Paris dear. "The other serious political moment in this process was the day France turned down the European Union constitution, because Chirac lost considerable political capital. Quite a lot of my colleagues in the IOC think or behave politically and they looked at this and said 'what's going on here'? The constitution was effectively a French document and then the French people turned it down - that's not the kind of political background you need going into an important election, in particular the highest profile race which the IOC had ever had."

So now we should go for more such bids, says Reedie. "I have always thought that people in Britain, and people in Scotland, were good organisers of events, but traditionally we have been lousy bidders. We've put that one to bed. We've shown that a bunch of talented people can pull off the biggest prize in sport and that sets an example - nothing, but nothing, is impossible."

With that, Reedie left for home and a rare day off to spend with his wife Rosemary. Then it was on to a trip around the world to talk up Glasgow, Scotland, the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics.

With his experience and skills, he has not stopped winning yet, and that is good news for Scottish sport.