Following the announcement that London is to host the 2012 Olympic Games, Lord Coe has claimed that work has already begun on making the bid dream a reality.

The government’s Olympic Bill has already had its first reading in Parliament and the search is on for a chief executive to lead the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) – the body responsible for hosting the 17-day event.

Coe will become chair of the organisation and Keith Mills, chief executive of the London 2012 bid team, will become deputy chair.

“The role of chief executive of LOCOG is a very different role to that of leading a bid team and requires a very different skill set,” said Mills.

“We will be appointing an executive search firm in the next week or so and the search for a full time chief executive will be underway in early August.

“We expect to have a someone identified by the end of the year, but this is a critical appointment and we are not going to rush it.”

Coe and Mills, along with other members of the 2012 team, will shortly be heading out to Australia to learn about the hosting of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, which Coe said were the ‘high watermark’ of recent Olympic Games.