Mayor determined to bring in an NFL franchise and see a return of the Tour de France in his blueprint for the capital’s sporting future
Alex Lentati

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has far-reaching dreams for the capital. “My ambition is for London to be the undisputed sporting capital of the world,” he says, in a wide- ranging interview at City Hall.

However, his plans are laced with realism. “I think we’re a long way from reaching that destination,” he says. “Since I’ve become Mayor, I’ve made it that we have to use all the strings on the bow to make sure that London is the greatest city in the world — and sport is part of doing that.”

In April last year, Melbourne beat London and other cities to be named the world’s No1 sporting city, but Khan is adamant London will, in time, eclipse Australia’s sporting hub.

A keen runner, who plays five-a-side football every Sunday, Khan says: “The evidence of my ambition for our city is looking at the sporting events we’re holding in London this year.”

Photo: Alexander Scheuber/Bongarts/Getty Images
Alexander Scheuber/Bongarts/Getty Images

He reels off London 2017, Wimbledon, NBA and NFL games, Test matches, the Champions Trophy, the FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley, the Women’s Tour cycle race and next month’s heavyweight showdown between Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko.

As a budding boxer from Earlsfield Amateur Boxing Club, where his eldest brother Sid is still head coach, Joshua-Klitschko clearly resonates more than some of the other events on London’s sporting calendar for the year.

“I can’t wait for it,” he says. “It’s the biggest heavyweight match in living memory for most boxing fans.”

The plan was initially for the fight to be staged in front of an 80,000 capacity crowd at Wembley. Khan interceded to get it to 90,000, the boxing anorak in him wanting to match “the biggest boxing match ever in London was 90,000 in 1939”.

“You’ve got the two greatest heavyweights of their era fighting in London, the message it sends around the world is phenomenal,” he adds.

Khan’s quest to spread that sporting message took him on a tour of North America in September to show that “London is open for business”, with sport playing a key part in that.

Already, there has been a sporting invasion from the States, NBA played at the O2 in January, four NFL games proposed for this year and as many as eight next year, and talks of baseball making its mark at the London Stadium in due course.

The biggest push of that trio clearly lies with NFL, Khan making no secret of his ambition for a franchise to be based in London, most likely at Tottenham’s new stadium, although Twickenham and Wembley will host two games apiece this year.

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Khan, who attended last year’s Twickenham game with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, says: “We in London love having the NFL here but it’s not just Londoners or just Brits but Europeans. They find it easier to come to London to watch a game than to travel to the East Coast of the States.

“Each game so far has been sold out but my dream, vision and aspiration is to have a permanent franchise here.”

To achieve that, 75 per cent of the NFL teams need to agree, but Khan is quietly confident. Twenty-four teams have already played in the capital and all, he claims, “left with a good experience”. Quite when that franchise is achieved is unknown, similarly Khan’s arguably more ambitious target to host the Super Bowl itself in London.

Khan’s argument is that the more big stadia in London, the better. Last week, he signed off plans for Chelsea’s 60,000-seater stadium, and is keen for Tottenham’s similar-sized proposal to go ahead.

“I want as many world-class sporting stadiums in London as I possibly can,” he says. “I said when I gave permission for the Chelsea development, this is another jewel in London’s sporting crown.

“When Spurs is redeveloped, not only will it simply improve the sport on offer but that area is going to be regenerated. That’s why I’m looking forward to Spurs and Haringey Council working together to bear fruit.”

And there are hopes of widening the use of London Stadium, which is undergoing a Mayoral investigation because of its rising costs, and with “serious questions to be asked”.

There is a keenness, too, to bring back the Tour de France after Boris Johnson cancelled plans in 2017 to host the race saying “it was not worth it”.

Khan has already met Tour officials, who have assured him that “they’re not holding a grudge from what happened last time: they realise that was the previous guy”, but the return of Le Tour looks likely to be some way off yet.

"Chelsea’s development is another jewel in London’s sporting crown"

Sadiq Khan

But besides the major events, there is an appetite to push sport away from elite terms. He worries about “the heartbreak of people lost as football fans or footballers” after coming up against racism, which he encountered in his early sporting forays.

“I’m of the era where going to football matches in the Eighties weren’t a lot of laughs if you look like me,” says Khan, whose parents moved from Pakistan to London just before he was born.

“My big brothers were Chelsea fans and back then went to Stamford Bridge to support their team, where they were racially abused and chased away by the National Front.

“For me, Wimbledon was my local team. I loved the romance of them working their way up to the First Division, although they were my second team to Liverpool.

“I was at a Spurs-Wimbledeon game in the FA Cup when I was racially abused by Wimbledon fans - my team, my fans. That put me off going to football matches.

“Things have changed and we have to celebrate the past 20 years, but what happened to Heung-min Son last week [Tottenham’s South Korean forward was racially abused by Millwall fans during the FA Cup quarter-final at White Hart Lane] was unacceptable.

“It [racism] still happens but the good thing, though, is when it happens we talk about it and action is taken.”

Another push away from elite sport is to state the case for more sport in the state school system.

Part of Khan’s election manifesto was to make up for “the failure of the last four years” in terms of Olympic legacy. “The Olympics were phenomenal in regenerating that part of London, but one promise made was to get more people playing sport — and that’s been squandered,” he says.

“You have to invest in the young. It’s below the water, it’s not sexy and it doesn’t get the headlines, but it’s so important. Sport is the best way to break down barriers, but the more schools I visit in London you aren’t seeing sport after school.

“People that give up their time to be coaches or mentor young people deserve a debt of gratitude, but we need to help them, give funding to community teams, help them with grants, make sure we support grassroots sports for girls and boys.”

For Khan, the subject resonates, his sporting passion — he had cricket trials with Surrey as a schoolboy — only taking off because of the support of teachers and his family.

He may never have reached his sporting aspirations — he likes to joke the Surrey rejection was “the biggest mistake [former England all-rounder] Geoff Arnold ever made” — but he seems determined to make his sporting mark in a very different way.

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