Simon Parker column

Running tracks are great for celebrating on.

Witness the scenes of jubilation after City mugged Rotherham with a late, late winner from James Hanson last season.

I swear one away fan even had a go at reaching the long jump pit.

But that glorious interlude aside, football and athletics don’t mix.

Putting them together in the same home will never work in England – and you don’t have to follow me to Ice Station Don Valley to see that.

But still the Olympic legacy committee had no choice but to give the new London stadium to West Ham.

The numbers don’t add up – can you ever imagine the Hammers attracting a 60,000 crowd even if they do manage to stay in the Premier League?

But all parties have been boxed into a corner by the promise of keeping an athletics facility on the site.

For all their bombastic talk of legal appeals, Spurs should never have been considered at all. When their plans were first unveiled, why did nobody point out: “Err, where’s the running track gone?”

Like it or not, the athletics part of the project has to stay. That’s what got the building started in the first place.

Football, for once, is not the be-all and end-all. Anyone who argues against that should take a running jump.