Olympics Bid Hinges on Geopolitics

New York’s Olympic hopes might suffer marginally from the Jets stadium debacle, but a greater issue for NYC2012 will be geopolitics. The 2012 bid is considered by many to be a two-way race between Paris and London, with the French capital being the city to beat.These are some of the observations I’ve been privy to from International Olympic Committee circles as members begin to think and talk about their choices for the 2012 Olympics host city after last month’s SportAccord conference.After a shaky start, London’s bid took shape last summer under the helm of Chairman Seb Coe. One of Britain’s greatest athletes, Lord Coe was awarded gold and silver medals at the Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games.Lord Coe’s affiliation with the International Association of Athletics, or IAAF, and his athletic background provide London with the type of leadership needed to win the respect of the IOC membership, and a few crucial additional votes. It’s often a struggle for bid committees to choose between business leaders and sports leaders to head their campaign, but London’s choice may pay dividends.Last month in Berlin, London’s chances seemed to diminish, however, when the bid’s questionable incentive scheme was sent to the IOC Ethics Commission. After being reprimanded by IOC President Jacques Rogge, London was compelled to withdraw the plan and bear the embarrassing consequences.But some IOC insiders blame Mr. Rogge for overreacting and believe that there will be no negative repercussions for Britain’s bid. In fact, London’s team may win a vote or two for their aggressiveness at a time when other bids seem to be shying away from risk – which brings us to Paris.From the outset of this competition, Paris has been widely considered the front-runner due to its recent bid experience and well-developed bid dossier. Being the perceived leader in an Olympic bid campaign is almost unenviable because that city must mount an ongoing marketing campaign with nothing further to gain and everything to lose.During the bid campaign for the 2008 Games, Paris was often criticized for its low-key approach – a style that held the bid behind competitors Beijing and Toronto after those cities used more aggressive methods. This time around, Paris is relying on what they’ve already built and are risk-averse. That strategy may work this time as the leader, but it keeps the window open for others, especially London.The Madrid team started its campaign strong and is running it with great confidence even now, as if they have already won. They issue frequent reports of small victories such as recruiting a large number of volunteers – and at last month’s SportAccord they reported that they had the best presentation by virtue of the longest duration of applause at its conclusion.Earlier in the campaign, Madrid looked to be Paris’s most worthy competitor, powered by support from the IOC’s most highly regarded family – Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former president, and his son, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., who is also an IOC member. But now it seems that wider support is being slowly eroded by new confidence in London and fears of security risks in Spain, leaving Madrid with only an outside chance of winning the bid.Meanwhile, Moscow’s campaign just doesn’t measure up. Likely included on the shortlist out of respect, the Russian capital – an important city to the Olympic movement – may not even be subjected to the embarrassment of a first-round elimination for that reason. But it’s clearly not ready to host another Olympic Games, and it will not make it past the second ballot.That leaves open a terrifying possibility for NYC2012 and the other competitors – first-ballot elimination. Someone’s got to go, and first round votes are often very unpredictable.As the only non-European city, New York is a geographical outsider in a race where continents are of the utmost importance. This anomaly will make NYC2012’s finish impossible to estimate.The strong desire within the IOC to have the 2012 Games based somewhere in Europe is obvious. First, the highly Eurocentric organization abandoned Europe’s only contender for the 2010 Winter Games, Salzburg, when it suffered an embarrassing first-round devastation, seemingly to leave the window open for Europe in 2012 instead. Then, the IOC selected four of the five 2012 shortlist candidates from Europe even though there was a credible bid from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.The IOC evaluation report will show that NYC2012 competes very well with any other bid on paper – unless that paper happens to be a map or calendar. If things don’t work out favorably on July 6, disappointed New York Olympic fans can take solace in the fact that their bid would likely be the front runner in a campaign for 2016. But with two months to go, anything can happen.Mr. Livingstone is the producer of GamesBids.com.

Olympics Bid Hinges on Geopolitics

Olympics Bid Hinges on Geopolitics

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