WEST HAM co-owner David Gold has described the decision to award the club the Olympic Stadium after the London 2012 Games as ‘a great day for England and Great Britain’.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company yesterday chose West Ham as their preferred option to move in to the stadium ahead of Tottenham.

The decision must now be ratified by the OPLC board, two government departments and the mayor of London.

Gold said: “We are very, very excited about what happened today and it is nice to be on the winning side.

“We represented what is right, what is fair and what is honest.

“It is a great day for England and Great Britain because we are keeping our promise.

“Lord (Sebastian) Coe gave a promise on behalf of us all and it would have been a tragedy if that had been broken.”

Gold was referring to West Ham’s proposal to retain the running track in their redeveloped stadium, thus leaving an athletics legacy that was promised when London won the bid to stage the Games back in 2005.

The Hammers’ rival bidders, Spurs, had said they would rebuild the stadium without the track and instead pledged to increase the capacity of the athletics stadium at Crystal Palace to 25,000.