2012 Olympics Update
Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2005 8:35 am
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... Vkm.rHiUwc
Olympic Voters May Pick Underdog Over Paris for 2012 (Update1)
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- The vote for the 2012 Olympic host city is in the hands of sports administrators, former athletes and royalty, who have a record of selecting underdogs.
London, Madrid, Moscow and New York will take on the frontrunner Paris when 100 International Olympic Committee members including Sepp Blatter, president of soccer ruling body FIFA, and Prince Albert of Monaco start voting July 6 in Singapore. Bookmaker William Hill rates Paris a 1-4 favorite, London at 11-4, Madrid 20-1, New York 25-1 and Moscow 50-1.
``History has not been that kind to the frontrunner,'' Michael Payne, the IOC's former marketing director, said yesterday in an interview in Singapore. The process ``has provided a few major surprises along the way.''
At stake are rights that would trigger construction investment from $15.8 billion in London to $6.2 billion in Paris and lift the winning nation's economy with jobs and tourism. Four of the past six votes for the summer games were upsets, including Atlanta beating Athens to the 1996 Olympics, Payne said.
A climate of secrecy resulting from bidding guidelines introduced in 1999 after the Salt Lake City bribery scandal has made gauging voting intentions more difficult, said Alex Gilady, an IOC member from Israel. Then, 10 members quit or were expelled for receiving money and perks from 2002 Winter Games organizers.
``I've no idea how anyone is voting since we don't talk to each other about it,'' said Gilady, an NBC Sports Vice President, last month in Beijing.
`Wildcard'
All committee members, from Russian pole-vault champion Sergey Bubka to Senegal's Lamine Diack, track and field's highest official, are now barred from visiting bid cities. Instead, they receive reports on the candidates prepared by an IOC commission and see presentations on the day of the ballot.
``We spent the first few days working on our presentation,'' Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London bid, said in an interview in Singapore yesterday. ``Now we are concentrating on the relationship end of the deal.''
Other upsets in bid voting include Seoul beating Nagoya for the 1988 Olympics and Sydney edging Beijing for the 2000 games, Payne said. Including Winter Olympics, four of the 13 most recent votes have gone against the favorite, he added.
Cutting out the visits to bid cities may have reduced the chance of a surprise, according to Ed Hula, founder and editor of aroundtherings.com, an Olympic news service.
``You see much more of technical aspects of bids rather than the intangible effect of that one-on-one lobbying,'' Hula said in a June 14 interview from Atlanta. ``Those visits became a wildcard.''
Returning the Call
An invitation-only club, IOC membership used to be life-long but since 1999 has been on eight-year terms. Also in the past six years, the IOC has invited athletes to join, with Namibian sprinter Frankie Fredericks among 19 now involved.
The rest of the list includes the Prince of Orange, a Liechtenstein princess, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Princess Anne of the U.K. Dick Pound, a Canadian IOC member, said a crude way to determine someone's suitability is ``whether, if they were to call the president or prime minister of their country, the call would be returned.''
Some IOC members are swayed by geo-politics and others only consider the technical nature of bids, such as stadiums and transport links, Pound wrote in his book ``Inside the Olympics.'' Most fall somewhere in the middle, he said.
Greek Victory
Vancouver only narrowly defeated what Pound said was a ``considerably inferior'' South Korean bid for the 2010 Olympics even though Beijing is holding the 2008 Olympics and the IOC tends to shun giving consecutive games to the same continent.
``The results are often astonishing and have been known to defy subsequent analysis,'' Pound wrote.
Of the 100 members eligible for tomorrow's first vote, 40 are from Europe, 26 are from Asia-Pacific, 12 from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 19 from Africa. Pound and two Mexicans are the only North Americans in the first ballot.
``The Commonwealth nations presumably would tend to favor London, which could be a bloc of 15-20 members,'' Hula said. ``France may suffer because there aren't many French-speaking countries.''
Voting is now televised, held by secret ballot and continues until one candidate has a majority, with the least popular city dropped after each round. It took two rounds for Beijing to win the 2008 vote, while Athens secured last year's games in the fourth ballot in another surprise win over Rome.
``Bookmakers usually get it wrong,'' said Seamus O'Brien, president of sports marketing company World Sport Group and an Olympic analyst for Channel News Asia, in an interview in Singapore on June 28. ``It's never been about who's got the best bid but about horseplay and sentiment.''
To contact the reporter on this story:
Grant Clark in Singapore at gclark@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: July 4, 2005 05:43 EDT
Olympic Voters May Pick Underdog Over Paris for 2012 (Update1)
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- The vote for the 2012 Olympic host city is in the hands of sports administrators, former athletes and royalty, who have a record of selecting underdogs.
London, Madrid, Moscow and New York will take on the frontrunner Paris when 100 International Olympic Committee members including Sepp Blatter, president of soccer ruling body FIFA, and Prince Albert of Monaco start voting July 6 in Singapore. Bookmaker William Hill rates Paris a 1-4 favorite, London at 11-4, Madrid 20-1, New York 25-1 and Moscow 50-1.
``History has not been that kind to the frontrunner,'' Michael Payne, the IOC's former marketing director, said yesterday in an interview in Singapore. The process ``has provided a few major surprises along the way.''
At stake are rights that would trigger construction investment from $15.8 billion in London to $6.2 billion in Paris and lift the winning nation's economy with jobs and tourism. Four of the past six votes for the summer games were upsets, including Atlanta beating Athens to the 1996 Olympics, Payne said.
A climate of secrecy resulting from bidding guidelines introduced in 1999 after the Salt Lake City bribery scandal has made gauging voting intentions more difficult, said Alex Gilady, an IOC member from Israel. Then, 10 members quit or were expelled for receiving money and perks from 2002 Winter Games organizers.
``I've no idea how anyone is voting since we don't talk to each other about it,'' said Gilady, an NBC Sports Vice President, last month in Beijing.
`Wildcard'
All committee members, from Russian pole-vault champion Sergey Bubka to Senegal's Lamine Diack, track and field's highest official, are now barred from visiting bid cities. Instead, they receive reports on the candidates prepared by an IOC commission and see presentations on the day of the ballot.
``We spent the first few days working on our presentation,'' Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London bid, said in an interview in Singapore yesterday. ``Now we are concentrating on the relationship end of the deal.''
Other upsets in bid voting include Seoul beating Nagoya for the 1988 Olympics and Sydney edging Beijing for the 2000 games, Payne said. Including Winter Olympics, four of the 13 most recent votes have gone against the favorite, he added.
Cutting out the visits to bid cities may have reduced the chance of a surprise, according to Ed Hula, founder and editor of aroundtherings.com, an Olympic news service.
``You see much more of technical aspects of bids rather than the intangible effect of that one-on-one lobbying,'' Hula said in a June 14 interview from Atlanta. ``Those visits became a wildcard.''
Returning the Call
An invitation-only club, IOC membership used to be life-long but since 1999 has been on eight-year terms. Also in the past six years, the IOC has invited athletes to join, with Namibian sprinter Frankie Fredericks among 19 now involved.
The rest of the list includes the Prince of Orange, a Liechtenstein princess, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Princess Anne of the U.K. Dick Pound, a Canadian IOC member, said a crude way to determine someone's suitability is ``whether, if they were to call the president or prime minister of their country, the call would be returned.''
Some IOC members are swayed by geo-politics and others only consider the technical nature of bids, such as stadiums and transport links, Pound wrote in his book ``Inside the Olympics.'' Most fall somewhere in the middle, he said.
Greek Victory
Vancouver only narrowly defeated what Pound said was a ``considerably inferior'' South Korean bid for the 2010 Olympics even though Beijing is holding the 2008 Olympics and the IOC tends to shun giving consecutive games to the same continent.
``The results are often astonishing and have been known to defy subsequent analysis,'' Pound wrote.
Of the 100 members eligible for tomorrow's first vote, 40 are from Europe, 26 are from Asia-Pacific, 12 from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 19 from Africa. Pound and two Mexicans are the only North Americans in the first ballot.
``The Commonwealth nations presumably would tend to favor London, which could be a bloc of 15-20 members,'' Hula said. ``France may suffer because there aren't many French-speaking countries.''
Voting is now televised, held by secret ballot and continues until one candidate has a majority, with the least popular city dropped after each round. It took two rounds for Beijing to win the 2008 vote, while Athens secured last year's games in the fourth ballot in another surprise win over Rome.
``Bookmakers usually get it wrong,'' said Seamus O'Brien, president of sports marketing company World Sport Group and an Olympic analyst for Channel News Asia, in an interview in Singapore on June 28. ``It's never been about who's got the best bid but about horseplay and sentiment.''
To contact the reporter on this story:
Grant Clark in Singapore at gclark@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: July 4, 2005 05:43 EDT
