'Paranoia' Keeps London Games Team on Track

London's Olympic organizers yesterday said that a "paranoid" attention to detail will ensure that the project remains on track as they prepare for the handover of the Olympic flag in Beijing next summer.

With construction due to start on the east London site in the summer shortly before London's Olympiad officially begins at the end of the Beijing games, Locog chief executive Paul Deighton said that paranoia would prevent any complacency. "The best antidote to complacency is paranoia and we are paranoid, believe me," said Deighton, speaking at London's end-of-year press conference. "We are so conscious of being across the project that we will not go to sleep."

Work has already begun on London's eight-minute contribution to the closing ceremony in Beijing, the final act of China's games.

Organizing committee chairman Lord Coe and Olympic Delivery Authority chairman John Armitt rejected suggestions that 2007 had been an annus horribilis for the project, with rows over the budget and controversy over the logo and the main stadium design dominating media coverage. "I'm very happy to defend and be very positive about all three," said Coe. "We are not only on track, we are exactly where we wanted to be. No city has been this far advanced at this stage of organizing an Olympic Games."

London has already signed up three tier one sponsors and expect to have as many as eight on board by the Beijing games. No previous city has had even one sponsor by the time the previous games began.

Armitt also revealed that all demolition work on the sites of the five main venues - stadium, velodrome, aquatic center, media center and athletes' village - has been completed.