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Wembley towers demolition fails
LONDON, England -- Wembley's famous doomed twin towers have defied demolition experts who had planned to bring them down to make way for England's new national stadium. The plan to remove the symbolic one and a half tonne concrete crowns and their 15-foot (4.5 metres) supporting poles from the top of the towers fell foul to technical hitches and the strength of a biting wind on Friday. The project, expected to last an hour, went into extra time and, despite last-ditch attempts to complete the task under the glare of floodlights, the demolition men finally had to admit defeat, the UK's Press Association reported. They are now hoping to remove both crowns on Saturday. The first problem involved the lifting clamp which was attached to the concrete poles supporting the crown by use of a 50-metre (164 feet) high crane. It had been designed to the original 1923 stadium plans -- and was found to be four inches (10 cm) too small. But after a new clamp was made and attached it was decided the wind had become too strong for it to be safe to complete the exercise. The crowns are being retained by the English Football Association " as part of the heritage of Wembley," an FA spokesman told the UK's Press Association. The 126ft-high (38 metres) white towers have watched over some of the great British sporting events -- the 1948 Olympics, the 1966 World Cup final and Euro 96 to name but a few. The main demolition work on the towers, which have always been seen as the beacons to follow by football fans as they started their walk up Wembley Way, is not due to commence until the new year. Demolition on the stadium began on September 9 and already bulldozers have pulled down the west end of the ground. After plans were unveiled in November 1998 for a new £757 million ($1,180 million), 90,000-seater stadium scheduled to be opened in 2006, it emerged that the famous towers would have to be demolished. On announcement of the plans, English Heritage launched a campaign to save the towers but withdrew its objections after plans for the new stadium were officially unveiled in July 1999. At the time, football figures, including World Cup hero Sir Geoff Hurst, expressed hope they could still be included in the designs for the new stadium, PA reported. But the site of the new Wembley is slightly different to that of the old, and the landmark would have ended up in the middle of the pitch. It would have been too expensive and difficult to move the towers in one piece or rebuild -- so it was decided they would be smashed into pieces. The move was defended by former Sports Minister Tony Banks, who dismissed the towers as "non-functional" while the FA chief executive of the time, Graham Kelly, admitted he could "not get excited" about them as the nation was set to possess one of the best stadiums in the world, PA reported. Months later, Lord Foster's original design was amended and the plan for four sky-scraping masts was ditched in favour of a giant "triumphant arch" -- seen as the symbolic replacement for the Twin Towers.
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