London 2012 Olympics: West Ham United 'will not submit formal bid' for Olympic Stadium by deadline

According to reports in the Times (£), West Ham are cold on the idea of wasting more money on another bid without there being more clarity, while they are also concerned about starting the process to sell their current home Upton Park unless they know for certain they are moving to the Olympic Stadium.

West Ham are thought to have spent nearly £1 million on the process of their first bid.

They are not the only London football club who are considering their options.

Leyton Orient are full participants in the “expressions of interest” phase, and are considering what kind of offer they might be able to make to the increasingly anxious OPLC

An issue for both football clubs is that the OPLC will retain the power to force tenants to share with each other.

The “pairing” system means that tenants have no choice about who they share with, meaning that the OPLC could impose a rugby club in a ground-share with West Ham, or pursue sharing between West Ham and Orient.

That would present a bigger problem to West Ham than to Leyton Orient.

United States Olympic Committee will spend £26m on logistics for London 2012 Olympics

The USOC, which is a privately funded organisation, also extended its backing to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who recently won both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.

USOC chairman Larry Probst, who also chairs the video game company EA told Telegraph Sport: "If Mitt was elected President it would be a positive thing for the USOC and a potential future Olympic bid."

He added that the USOC, the biggest player in the Olympic Movement because of the massive £2.8 billion Olympic broadcast rights fees paid by NBC, continued to enjoy positive support from the Democrats as well.

But Romney, the Republican front-runner, is revered for the way he took control of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games and steered it to success after the organisation was mired in bribery and corruption scandals. He has strong affection for the Games and would be likely to enthusiastically promote future bids from American cities.

Probst said the last Olympic bid put forward by the Americans, that of Chicago for the 2016 Olympics, which resulted in a first-round loss in the 2009 vote, was an enormous shock to all concerned.

"That was not a pleasant experience for President Obama," he said.

But Probst insisted the decision about bidding in the future – would not be politically driven, but rather economically affected, given the country's current debt problems. "I don't think the White House will get involved in terms of advocating or not, whether it's a Summer or Winter Games bid."

The Americans have declined to stage a bid for future Games in the past three years because of ongoing resentment within parts of the IOC about the percentage of the US broadcast deals which flow to the USOC and this was blamed for the Chicago failure.

Further meetings on revising those percentages are due this Friday during the Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck but any settlement is not expected any time soon.