guardian.co.uk,
Nicholas Watt, Friday 27 July 2012
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| Carl Lewis, who won nine Olympic gold medals, countered Mitt Romney's remarks by saying: 'Of course London is ready.' Photograph: Can Nguyen/ Rex Features |
Mitt Romney
has been rebuked by the US Olympic legend Carl Lewis after the presumptive
Republican presidential nominee questioned whether London was fully prepared
for the Olympic Games.
As Romney
was mocked on US television and by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, in front of
a crowd of 60,000 people, Lewis called on him to return home.
"Seriously,
some Americans just shouldn't leave the country," the nine-times Olympic
gold medal winner told the Independent.
Asked
whether London was ready to stage the Games, Lewis said: "Of course London
is ready."
Romney
stumbled into a diplomatic disaster on the first stage of his first official
overseas visit as the presumptive Republican nominee when he told NBC there
were "disconcerting" signs that London was ill-prepared for the
Olympics.
An
irritated David Cameron slapped Romney down by saying that Britain was staging
the Games in a "bustling" city and not "in the middle of
nowhere". This was intended as a light-hearted reference to the Salt LakeWinter Olympic Games, which were famously rescued by Romney in 2002. Some in
Whitehall said his performance on the diplomatic stage was more woeful than
Sarah Palin's four years ago.
Romney
tried frantically to row back on Thursday as he said the Games would be a great
success. But the damage had been done.
Romney was
teased remorselessly on US television. The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC ran the
story as #romneyshambles – a reference to the phrase omnishambles from political comedy The Thick of It. The stand-in presenter opened the show
saying: "Let's just be honest here. Today was a terrible, horrible, no
good, very bad day to be Mitt Romney. Even if you consider yourself the
staunchest Mitt Romney supporter out there, you probably have to admit that
today did not go exactly according to plan. The kick-off of Mitt Romney's big
overseas trip has kind of been a disaster."
On Friday
morning, the UK culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, referred to Romney's gaffes
when he was asked about London's readiness for the Games. Hunt told the ITV
show Daybreak: "The person I care about more is Jacques Rogge, the
president of the International Olympic Committee, who said London was the
best-prepared city he had ever seen.
"When
we have the opening ceremony tonight and we tell the world that eight of the
world's top 10 sports were either invented or codified in Britain – and only
two in America – I hope Mr Romney is watching."
And Boris
Johnson, the London mayor, joined in when he mocked Romney at a rally in Hyde
Park on Thursday evening. "There are some people who are coming from
around the world who don't yet know about all the preparations we've done to
get London ready over the last seven years. I hear there is a guy called Mitt
Romney who wants to know whether we are ready."
Johnson
then asked whether London was ready. As the crowd cheered, the mayor declared:
"Yes we are. The venues are ready, the stadium is ready, the aquatic
centre is ready, the velodrome is ready, the security is ready, the police are
ready, the transport is ready and our Team GB athletes are ready.
"There
will be more gold, silver, bronze medals than you need to bail out Greece and
Spain together."
As Johnson
piled the pressure on Romney, the Republican was at the nearby Mandarin
Oriental Hyde Park for a fundraiser in central London on Thursday night. The
dinner was estimated to have raised at least $2m for his campaign, according to
the New York Times.
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