Team Gb's Success in Beijing is Converting 'olympo-sceptics', Says London Mayor

The Beijing Games and Britain's startling medal haul are converting "Olympo-skeptics" to the cause of London 2012, Boris Johnson said today as he arrived in the Chinese capital.

The London mayor, who will take the Olympic flag at Sunday's closing ceremony on behalf of the next host, insisted that the city would not be overshadowed by its predecessor.

"We have been dazzled, we have been impressed, we have been blown away by these Beijing Games, but we have not been intimidated. I am convinced we can do just as well in 2012," Johnson told a press conference.

"The success of these Games are making them more popular in Britain. I think the successes of Team GB are blowing away Olympo-skepticism."

He added: "I can tell you that the city [of London] is in a ferment of excitement about this.

"People who have never shown the slightest interest in a cycle race are hurling themselves at TV screens and yelling themselves hoarse with excitement."

Despite lavishing praise on the Beijing organizers, he was unable to resist a reference to the controversy over the young singer Yang Peiyi, who was replaced on stage at the opening ceremony by Lin Miaoke, considered more photogenic by senior officials.

Asked if he had any criticisms of the Games, he replied: "Had it been us, I don't think we would necessarily have done the switc hero with the girl with the braces."

He told reporters that criticisms of China's human rights record could not be overlooked but acknowledged that he had not raised the issue in a morning meeting with the mayor of Beijing.

"I don't think you will necessarily achieve what you want in this context by showboating and grandstanding," he added.

The London 2012 budget is just over half the £20bn which Beijing has spent on the Games, but Johnson insisted that the capital would not see a "mean, penny-pinching austerity show."

He also called upon investors from around the world to help regenerate the east London area where the Games will take place.

"We are looking for ideas of how London's Olympic Park can become not just a great place to live, work and visit, but a place that retains a flavor of the extra-ordinary, a place with the 'wow' factor, a place of magic," he said.

But the mayor raised the specter of the main 2012 stadium being turned into a football facility after the Games, rather than remaining primarily an athletics base as promised.

London's bid to the International Olympic Committee and International Association of Athletics Federations in 2005 proposed that the Stratford venue would become a compact, 25,000-seat athletics facility.

Asked about its long-term future, Johnson told reporters: "This is still a story that is not closed; we should look at it and continue to explore all options."

Discussing the "interesting" example of Beijing's Bird's Nest, he added: "There are issues to do with their managing to attract football to the stadium but so far we have failed to do that in London."

But if former plans to bolt an athletics track on to a larger 40,000-seat football stadium were revived, the venue would be half-empty for athletics events.

The London Development Agency has final say over post-Games use of facilities.

Lord Coe earlier told the BBC that Beijing was the last Olympics to be held on a grand scale.

"The International Olympic Committee themselves recognize that this is the last edition of a Games which is going to look and feel like this," he said.