After two days of lobbying at the Oceania National Olympic Committees General Assembly in Brisbane Australia, officials from the five cities bidding to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games have gone home, hoping that their city will be selected host city for the 2012 Games.
Although Paris has been considered the frontrunner, Paris 2012 head Philippe Baudillon said there was no place for complacency, reports Reuters. “We really want the Games. This is our third time trying. We are making our own race and we are not going to change that in the last 100 days”, he said.
London bid chairman Sebastian Coe said London was closing in fast. “We came to this bidding process considerably later than some other cities and we had to make sure we had that public support and we have that now. The international people whose judgment I value in this process tell us that we are taken seriously and that there is a momentum”, he said.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the son of the former International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, emphasized Madrid’s environmental features and its plans to build the athletes’ village close enough to the venues so the competitors could walk to the events.
Moscow stressed its record of hosting major events, including the boycotted 1980 Olympics. Moscow deputy mayor Valery Shantsev said through an interpreter, “the Olympics that took place in 1980 were of the highest level event if not everyone was there…we are not ashamed of them. But we had a very different country then. It was the Soviet Union then, now it is the new Russia and our goal is to show the world the new Russia.
