Diack puts London back on world map

There were 17,000 fans packing Crystal Palace on Friday night, and such was the demand for tickets that they probably could have filled the old stadium twice over. It was an atmosphere which could not have failed to impress the most significant face in that crowd.

Lamine Diack, the venerable Senegalese judge who presides over world athletics, sat alongside one of the great British heroes of the sport, the Olympic hurdling gold medallist David Hemery. Their conversation touched not only on what might have been – the farcical failure of the attempt to bring the 2005 world championships to London – but what could still be.

Despite the embarrassment of Picketts Lock, which still has Hemery shaking his head despairingly, both he and Diack, the International Association of Athletics Federations president, believe that London is a natural home for the event, either at a reconstituted Wembley, or even at the Palace should those deliberating on the future of the 30-year-old venue, from the Government downwards, summon the wit and find the cash to restore and rebuild.

Diack may be a senior citizen but he is a new-age sports leader much in the mould of the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge. Unlike his pompous Italian predecessor, Primo Nebiolo, Diack is a man of the athletes, electing to stay and mix with them at their Croydon hotel rather than the Park Lane suite where the late Dr Nebiolo insisted on residing during his visits to London, when he seemed to wish to be received as if he was attending a function at Buckingham Palace rather than Crystal Palace.

Diack is also a judge who bears no grudge, and would like to do business with Britain. The world indoor championships will be held in Birmingham next year, and he would like to see not only a future outdoor championship but a Grand Prix final and a prestigious Golden League meeting held in London. So it was a pity that either holidays or more pressing engagements prevented some of the bigger wigs of the various sporting quangos or those in Government charged with looking after our sporting interests being present for what, status-wise, was the athletics equivalent of the FA Cup final.

Had either the sports minister, Richard Caborn, or his departmental overlady, Tessa Jowell (in whose constituency Crystal Palace is situated) made it to the meeting it would have afforded the perfect opportunity to repair further the relationship that got off to such an appalling start over Picketts Lock, when Diack was treated patronisingly by bungling bureau-crats who were babes in the woods of sports politics. Diack may have forgiven, but he has not forgotten.

His obvious enjoyment at the way athletics was presented and supported both in Manchester and at the Palace has done the sport here no harm. But he still needs to be convinced, as do we all, that the Government would seriously support any attempt to put London on the world map of worthy track-and-field venues before considering whether an upgraded Palace meeting should be included in the Golden League series next year.

It is this sort of incentive that is needed if athletics is to nurture the present crop of young athletes, of whom Dwain Chambers is emerging as a potential winner of next year's world championship sprint events both indoors in Birmingham and outdoors in Paris. He has gone from Commonwealth cramp to European champ, and now four-time conqueror of the world's fastest man, Maurice Greene, within a month.

"I've done a lot of growing up," he says. "I believe I'll be a better and stronger athlete next year."

Although after a hard season British athletes blew more cold than hot on the night, with the effervescent Chambers the sole home victor, the sport is in decent shape. There is that £40 million promissory note from the Government as a sweetener for the loss of the world championships (though UK Athletics has yet to see the colour of their money), a five-year deal with Friday night's Grand Prix sponsors, Norwich Union, and an ongoing arrangement with the BBC.

With the assembly of 16 Olympic and 31 world champions in a three-and-a-half hour spectacular presented with considerable pizzazz, and costing over £1 million in appearance money alone, it is clear there is the financial and promotional wherewithal.

In the Dwain Man British athletics has a new prince. What it needs now is a new Palace.