Dick Pound, member of the International Olympic Committee and a possible candidate for the IOC presidency, said it’s conceivable Canada could win back-to-back Olympic bids. He was referring to the fact that Toronto is bidding for the 2008 Summer Olympics and Vancouver/Whistler is Canada’s selection for the 2010 Winter Games.
Toronto Star columnist Randy Starkman writes that the chances of Toronto winning the 2008 Summer Games and Vancouver/Whistler landing the 2010 Winter Olympics “are less than remote. They’re nil”.
Starkman writes that in November of 1998, Dick Pound strongly stated that the Canadian Olympic Association “was making a bid mistake by allowing parallel bids. He felt the Vancouver/Whistler bid should have been postponed until after the site for the 2008 Games is decided in July in Moscow for fear of undermining Toronto’s Bid”.
And the IOC’s Paul Henderson, former head of Toronto’s failed 1996 bid, told CBC Radio Sports he believes that’s exactly what is happening right now.
Pound claims the two bids are helping one another, and that, if Toronto wins, the hill will get “marginally steeper but not insurmountable” for Vancouver”, writes Starkman. Pound said “Let’s get out there and get both prizes”.
But Starkman says there’s a third prize at stake. At the same Moscow meeting where the IOC determines the host city of the 2008 Games, the IOC will choose the successor to IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, and although Pound has not officially declared his candidacy, Starkman says its clear he desperately wants the job.
Starkman writes, “it’s hard to see how Pound’s campaign will do anything but hurt Toronto’s bid. Surely the Montreal lawyer is going to be more concerned in Moscow with his own fate than he will that of Toronto’s bid”.
And he adds, “there’s a line of thinking that suggests there’s no way a Canadian city and a Canadian citizen are going to get two huge sporting prizes from the IOC at the same meeting”.
