With eight bids being examined by the USOC evaluation team this summer, a 2008 win for Beijing can also be a win for the United States.
The eight U.S. cities hoping to become the U.S. bid city for the 2012 Summer Games are New York, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Fla., the San Francisco bay area, Los Angeles, Cincinnati and the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
Now that Beijing has been awarded the 2008 Games, there won’t be a Chinese challenger to the U.S. bid. It also keeps North America in play for the next Summer Games.
Had Toronto won instead of finishing a distant second, the U.S. chances for 2012 would have been virtually non-existent because the IOC tends to avoid visiting the same continent for two Olympics in a row.
Sandy Baldwin, the USOC’s president said, “I have absolutely no problem with a Beijing victory”.
The IOC will pick the 2012 bid city in 2005. But it could be a crowded field. The four losers of Friday’s vote are expected to run again, and other contenders include London, Madrid, Moscow, Germany and Hungary.
But the Olympic Games in North America would have major appeal because the competition would be shown in prime time for U.S. television, the biggest single income source for the IOC. NBC’s $3.5 billion rights contract runs out after Beijing.
