Someone told Robert Smith recently: "You know nothing about sport." Never one to duck a full-frontal challenge, Lord Smith of Kelvin retorted: "I didn't know I was being asked to run." As it happens, the man invited to chair the organising company for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow hits his 65th birthday this August. A bit late for competitive sprinting perhaps. However, he does know precisely what he's there to do.
"I was very proud when I heard the city I grew up in had won this bid. I wasn't thinking too much about what it was all costing. Now I'm in, my job is to make sure we've got proper controls in place, we've got budgets, we've got boards that operate properly."
Smith has already insisted all his board members - an assortment of athletes, public officials, local politicians, sports administrators and business people - go on directors' training courses. "They are doing corporate governance and liking it. I was there for a whole day session, where they couldn't escape.
"Round that table they've all got conflicts of interests because they are either funding it, or they are Federation people who own the franchise, or they are central government or local government, or they are athletes who just want the best facilities. But hold on. We are all here to deliver these Games, Games Glasgow and Scotland can be proud of, but deliver them in a properly organised way."
Smith expects tensions from time to time. But he is counting on his formidable track record in business, the crossbencher instincts that marked him out long before he was sent to the red benches of the House of Lords last year, his ability to complement a blokeish accessibility with "a wee bit of the iron fist", should it be needed, and his success to date in raising sponsorship for Scotland's museums, most recently the new Riverside Museum at Yorkhill, to see him through.
OF course the 2014 bid was won in more upbeat economic times. With recession upon us and a severe squeeze on the public finances looming, is he still confident that, as he promised when appointed in February 2008, the Games can be brought in on time and to budget? "On time is a bit of a given," he laughs. "We can't have people running around in shorts and gym shoes and saying to them, Could you come back tomorrow?'"
The budget, at this stage, he calls "an aspiration". The original bid budget was set at £373m at April 2007 prices. Smith's organising company is charged with raising just over £75m of that, with the remaining £298m coming from the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council.
"Those were the numbers at that time at those prices. You then work through what it takes to produce a Games. We've got to work up an operational plan and a budget to go with that and we're in the midst of doing that stuff right now."
Smith's organising company isn't responsible for the bulk of the capital investment associated with the Games. The £300m Commonwealth village contract revealed this week is predominately the city council's responsibility. The cost of making the village suitable for use by athletes for the 11 days of the games and for restoring it as long-term new housing on the banks of the Clyde, which Smith puts at some £15m, is for his body to fund.
The organising company is also picking up half the cost of the new velodrome, currently under construction, and a similar share of adding lanes at the Tollcross swimming pool, a contribution of around £11m in each case. Then there's the cost of taking out six rows of seats out around the front at Hampden Park, the main track and field venue, raising the entire surface by a metre and a half, and taking all that infill away again afterwards so Queen's Park get their football pitch back as it was.
Overall, just under £70m of the budget Smith's body controls will go on venues.
THE bulk will be spent on transport, ceremonies, promotion, security and all the other things that go into staging an international sporting event of this scale. Is he still confident that his main funders, when faced with their own budget squeeze from 2011 onwards, will honour their commitments?
"There's a host city contract. It's a legally binding document agreed with the Federation, signed by central and local government. That's an absolute obligation. That's how I'm reading it. I don't think they'll turn round to the Federation and say: Actually we've changed our mind," Smith insists. "We've got to ensure that our own budget is robust enough to do it. We inherited that budget. I've got to be sure nothing's been missed. Then that's a budget I'm absolutely prepared to stand by."
Smith acknowledges these are very tough times to be raising corporate sponsorship for anything. But the Games isn't like funding museums, where the only tangible return is discharging your corporate social responsibility and getting your name carved in stone. There is a commercial pay-back here. And with these Games still five years away, there is still time plenty of time for the prevailing climate to change again.
Indeed Smith sees a real opportunity in building on the impact of the 2012 Olympics in London. One of our troubled banks, Lloyds, is already committed to significant sponsorship there. Why can't major commercial sponsors in 2012 be persuaded to build on that relationship with British athletics and carry it through to 2014? But he will have to wait a bit yet to find out what appetite there is out there to back the Games.
With Dehli due to host the 2010 gathering, Federation protocol dictates that Glasgow can't start seeking such sponsorship until 2011. However, on an encouraging note, broadcast rights in Australia for the 2014 Games have already been snapped up.
The same momentum logic applied to the 2012 London Olympics will, Smith argues, influence ticket sales at the Glasgow Games. "I am very confident that people will turn out in force to watch the Glasgow Games," he says. "There are two billion people in the Commonwealth. Manchester didn't have to scratch around to sell tickets, nor did Melbourne." With Scotland's growing reputation in the swimming pool and in cycling, with the cream of world sevens rugby at Ibrox and global superstars like Usain Bolt at Hampden, it should be "a sporting feast".
Why has Lord Smith taken on the challenge? Certainly not for personal reward. He's turned down the chairman's salary, of around £54,000 a year, just as he doesn't take a penny from his membership of the House of Lords. "I'm in the fortunate position that I don't need the money" he explains. This is simply about delivering a lasting legacy for a city that is still close to his heart.
