A report in the Washington Post Wednesday says that Washington and San Francisco are the apparent frontrunners in the race to become the U.S. candidate for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, according to a highly placed U.S. official involved in the process.
It seems that New York’s bid has lost ground because of projected construction costs of more than $4 billion because USOC officials fear they can’t sell an extremely expensive bid to the IOC when Athens is still struggling to honour construction promises for the 2004 Olympics and IOC president Jacques Rogge is leading a campaign to slash the size of the Games and the cost of staging them.
As for Houston, several USOC officials have said they don’t believe Houston can win an international contest likely to include London, Paris and Rome.
The Washington Post report says that Washington seems to have the advantage in the overall quality of a bid that received a venue overhaul this spring. The official was impressed with the plan, saying every bid has to “pull on the IOC members’ hearts a little bit”.
Readers of GamesBids.com appear to agree with the Washington Post report. In an unscientific GamesBids.com poll conducted July 15 and 16 immediately following the USOC site evaluation visits, 46 per cent of those responding said that San Francisco and Washington would most-likely be the pair selected to the USOC short-list in September. It was in stark contrast to a similar poll taken in June before the visits when New York was in the top three pairings.
According to the report at least one official close to the process said the USOC believes it can successfully pitch either San Francisco or Washington to the IOC.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle says that San Francisco 2012 officials are encouraged by the report in the Washington Post. Anne Cribbs, president and CEO of the Bay area Sports Organizing Committee said, “we would be honoured to be one of the two cities. We continue to believe we can win internationally”.
However Mike Moran, the USOC’s assistant executive director called the report nonsense. “They haven’t even ranked them yet. It’s hard to comment on that because it just isn’t true. It’s Aesop’s fables. It is not accurate. Basically its fiction. That’s unfortunate. I don’t think it’s coming from the bid group, and outside the bid group, no one is in position to know.”
Charles Moore, chairman of the USOC site inspection team said, “there’s absolutely no credence to that statement. We’re not there yet. They may have an edge, but we haven’t gotten there yet. I’d be very surprised if it was one of our task force. Our task force, to a person, has been very closed-mouthed. I think it’s someone conjecturing”.
