SINGAPORE - Win or lose, Britain should be proud of the "brilliant" bid London has made for the 2012 Olympics, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said late Monday in an impassioned speech.
Blair was addressing members of the bid team as well as celebrity athletes including David Beckham at a reception in Singapore, where the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will decide the host city of the Games on Wednesday.
Speaking in front of former British athletics great Sebastian Coe, who is leading the bid, and other top members of the team, Blair was effusive in his praise.
"These guys are amazing. They are absolutely fantastic, and they have done a job for our country of which they can be, and we are, very, very proud," he said.
"It would be a wonderful legacy for British sport (to get the Games), but also for the Olympic movement, and if there is anything we have tried to communicate in the last few days and will carry on doing so, right until the last few moments, (it) is we are very, very proud of London," Blair said.
"We are very proud of our committee and we feel we can make the Olympic movement proud of this bid as well.
"We want it to be a marvellous Games, not just for our country but for the Olympic movement, the Olympic ideals and the Olympic spirit."
Blair and his wife Cherie spent Monday frantically lobbying IOC members ahead of a vote which is expected to see London and Paris closely matched for the prize of hosting the 2012 event.
The prime minister was due to leave Singapore late Tuesday for the Group of Eight (G8) leaders' summit he is hosting in Gleneagles, Scotland, before the IOC vote.
Among those he will deal with at the G8 gathering will be French President Jacaques Chirac, with whom Blair has badly fallen out in recent weeks over the European Union budget.
Blair ended his address to the reception, held at the British High Commissioner's residence, with what to some present appeared a veiled barb aimed at Chirac.
"I want to say the G8 summit would be an anti-climax but that would be undiplomatic, and I know when we go there I will be in the presence of very diplomatic people," Blair said cryptically.
07/04/2005 15:34 GMT