David Luckes speaks with FIH President and IOC Evaluation Commission member, Els van Breda Vriesman, during the commission's visit to London. Inset, Mercedes Coghen. Photos © John Gichigi/Getty Images

Countdown to 2012 

Two former Olympians have been heavily involved in promoting their respective cities’ 2012 Olympic bids. Claire Middleton, Hockey Correspondent at The Daily Telegraph (London), spoke to David Luckes and Mercedes Coghen. 

July 6 in Singapore is D-Day for David Luckes. You might not recognise him, for he spent most of his playing days behind a goalkeeper’s mask, but since retiring from a demanding job between the posts for England and Great Britain he has been working on a London bid for the Olympic Games. 

His career with the British Olympic Association was not launched by London’s candidature this time, for it has been his role to maintain a state of readiness in case Britain was going to bid. In short, it was his hard work that ensured London could get its programme up and running quickly and, as Sports and Venues Manager, it has been his job to ensure that every Olympic sport will have the facilities it needs should the vote go London’s way. 

He is one of many athletes who have been called upon by the five candidate cities bidding for the 2012 Olympics (of course, Madrid, Paris, Moscow and New York are all also in the running), though most of the well-known names have ambassador status while Luckes has been working at the sharp end, dealing with architects, lawyers and athletes. So, come July 6, and the big vote, Luckes will either be celebrating, or looking for another job. 

“I have been speaking to the international federations, assessing exactly what they need to run their competitions, making sure that everything from facilities to transport will be just right,” he said. 

As a consequence he has travelled the globe – recently to Long Beach for track cycling, Madrid for tae kwon do, Monaco for modern pentathlon – and become an expert on all 28 Olympic sports. Ask him about equestrianism and he glows enthusiastically about the challenges of combining a world heritage sight in Greenwich with grooms, riders and stables, plus a show-jumping arena and seating for 23,000. It’s technical, and it’s testing, especially when there are no guarantees that the hard work will be rewarded in Singapore next month. 

“It has been a non-stop carousel but with only days to go you can’t get off now,” he said. 

“No two days have been the same in the last 12 months. In most jobs there are elements of repetition, even if it’s once a year you find at some stage you are doing the same thing you have done before. Here it has been different every day and we obviously all hope it won’t just have been a paper exercise.

“That has been the most difficult part of the job, the aspect of having to realise that whatever you do could count for nothing if 117 IOC members vote for another city. I think in sport, you know that if you play well, follow the plan and do the right things, you have a good chance of winning. With this, it is impossible to gauge how the individual members will vote. 

“These decisions will affect the shape of sport in every one of those five countries forever and that makes the process both exhilarating and nerve-racking.” 

Luckes played for England and Great Britain until his retirement after the Sydney Games of 2000. He was unlucky to have played second fiddle to Simon Mason (now a member of London’s athlete advisory panel), though he earned more than 100 caps and was one of the most professional, and likeable, members of the squad. He has a ready wit and would surely not be unemployed for long should the Games go elsewhere but London. 

“It would not really be an option to go back to the British Olympic Association and into the day-to-day world of the office after this,” he admitted. “I think I would take two weeks off, sit on a beach and make some decisions. It’s not something I can contemplate now because if I – or anybody in the team – were worrying about our cv’s or tapping up potential employers for the next job, we would be taking our eyes of the ball and that can’t happen. 

“When we played in an international hockey tournament, we would get on with it, go home, forget about it and move on. With this job, that’s impossible because you cannot switch off. We are also hoping that the vote will only be the beginning.” 

Mercedes Coghen, 42, the captain and a gold-medal winner with Spain’s women in 1992, is another hockey player at the business end of an Olympic bid. She is an ambassador for Madrid and as such has been spreading their message to the hockey players of the world. 

“I am sure the final decision will be very, very tight because it has been like a race, even if, as an individual, you are not competing,” she said. “Most of the sports have medallists acting as ambassadors so my job is to reach as many people in my sport as possible and convince them that Madrid deserves to host 2012.” 

When we spoke, she was helping Spanish club side Club de Campo by watching Hightown taking on Bonagrass Grove at the European Club Championships – though as both Hightown (England) and Grove (Scotland) are British teams, presumably London would be their choice for 2012. 

“I have been to the Olympic qualifying tournament, in Madrid, and also to places like Japan to pass on the message – I hope I can transmit what I feel. It is very exciting and an honour to be involved,” she said. 

Mason, meanwhile, who has just retired from the international game, is on an athletes’ panel which offers tweaks and minor adjustments which should make life easier for athletes, both in the competition venues, and the Olympic village. As Luckes puts it: These athletes see things that a city planner would not necessarily notice, or understand.” 

For both Luckes and Coghen, the Olympic bids have allowed them to maintain the sort of adrenalin level they achieved while actually playing sport. 

“Has it been interesting? Yes,” said Luckes. “Has it been exciting? Yes. Is it nerve-racking? Definitely. It has been good to come into this from a sporting background because it is probably the nearest thing you can find to sporting competition, outside sporting competition. 

“We are involved in a five-way play-off and only one of us can win. It is cut throat, dog-eat-dog, there is a buzz and it’s high pressure. It’s just that none of us are in control of our own destinies and that is the main difference to sport, and life in general.”