LONDON, England (Reuters) – The IOC has agreed to scrap plans for a new temporary venue near the London Olympic Park and will house badminton and rhythmic gymnastics in an existing venue because of the “exceptional circumstances” of the recession.

London 2012 organisers proposed switching venues to keep costs down and have both events at Wembley Arena during the longest and deepest downturn in decades, despite initial protest from the sports’ bodies.

The decision follows months of uncertainty, but the IOC denied the deal would set a precedent for future bid cities to change their plans.

“We just hope we won’t have a world financial crisis every four years,” Denis Oswald, head of the IOC’s co-ordination commission, said at the end of a two-day visit yesterday.

“This is, I think, exceptional circumstances, and when we had the request of using an existing facility rather than building a temporary facility, which would not leave any legacy, we found it was reasonable.

“But it does not mean that we would accept it under any circumstances.”

A final agreement on scrapping the North Greenwich Arena 2 in favour of Wembley Arena is not expected until early next year after the sports federations have discussed the deal at their board meetings.

Badminton England had argued the travel time between the Olympic Village and Wembley Arena on the other side of the city would damage athletes’ performance.

But the IOC said training facilities and accommodation would be found near the arena, making travel time less critical.

The decision to re-locate these two sports is good news for boxing which strongly opposed being forced away from the conveniently positioned ExCel venue to accommodate them.

Games organisers would not say how much money would be saved, but media reports have put construction costs for the now scrapped North Greenwich Arena 2 at 40 million pounds ($66.71 million).

London’s Olympic budget has already spiralled from an initial estimate of 2.4 billion pounds to 9.3 billion pounds.

While one venue issue appears to have been laid to rest, the thorny question of what to do with the main Olympic Stadium remains.

News that organisers of England’s 2018 World Cup bid have included it on their list of potential venues has re-opened the debate over its long-term future.

Numerous suggestions have come and gone, with little interest from any of London’s soccer clubs moving in. The latest thinking seems to be that the 80 000-seater will be reduced to a permanent 28 000-seat athletics venue, but nothing has been ruled in or out.

The beauty of the stadium is the flexibility of its design,” said LOCOG chairman Seb Coe. “And we now have an Olympic Park Legacy Company in place and they will discuss those issues.”

Oswald said that Olympic chiefs were so impressed with London’s legacy plans that they had asked them to make a presentation to a meeting of the Association of Olympic cities – an organisation of cities which have held the Games.

“London is exemplary to all bidding cities,” he said. “Most people think about putting their legacy company in place after the Games but London has its in place three years before the Games take place.”

Oswald said discussions over the last two days had included ticketing systems in a bid to avoid a repeat of Beijing where many stadiums had masses of empty seats despite being advertised as sold out.