Athletics could return to the Olympic Stadium in 2015 due to a gap in its rebuilding schedule The Sainsbury's International Para Challenge on Sunday was the last sporting to event to be held in the stadium before work begins in the autumn on dismantling the roof and floodlight towers and constructing a much larger roof that will provide shelter for all seated areas. It is due to reopen temporarily in September 2015 when four Rugby World Cup pool matches as well as the third-place play-off are played at the stadium before it is closed again for another year to allow retractable seating to be built over a running track. West Ham United will move in at the start of the 2016-17 season. The original plan was for the London Diamond League meeting to move elsewhere for two years before returning in 2016 but UK Athletics chairman Ed Warner said that there was now a "good chance" the meeting could be back a year earlier if work on the roof kept to schedule. The existing track will be ripped up during the roof reconstruction but, before retractable seating is added, there would still be space around the infield to construct a temporary track in 2015. "The Rugby World Cup will be in the current seat configuration, with a space around the pitch," Warner said. The construction of the roof has to end by a certain time so they can have test events and health and safety checks, so there's a opportunity if it ends on schedule, which I believe is May 2015, to then whack in a ­temporary track and even use the meeting as a test event in that lull between the roof being finished and the rugby starting. I've seen a price quoted of a £1 million to lay a temporary track. If you spread the cost of a million pounds worth of track over three days of athletics, it's a couple of quid on the price of a seat. The Mayor of London would love it to be here and we'd love it to be here. The Diamond League meeting next year will either remain in London or move north of the border to Hampden Park ahead of the Commonwealth Games, though Warner ruled out a return to Crystal Palace because it would be a "backward step." One option being examined is to construct temporary venues in The Mall and Horse Guards Parade in central London to create a "street athletics" meeting akin to the Great City Games in Manchester. "We're talking to the Greater London Authority about that," Warner said. The Mayor would like to keep the event in London for obvious reasons. It was a London Olympics and Paralympics. Hampden Park could provide other advantages, however. The Government has granted a tax exemption for overseas athletes competing at the Commonwealth Games which could be extended to a pre-Games Diamond League meeting in Glasgow, allowing triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt to compete.