Now that four cities (New York, Washington, Houston and San Francisco) have been selected to compete to become the U.S. candidate for the 2012 Summer Games, Charles Moore, chair of the USOC’s Bid Evaluation Task Force said he told each of the cities “they’re back to square one”.
The four cities that made the cut scored the highest on a list of 13 criteria developed by the USOC’s bid evaluation task force in areas such as sports and general infrastructure, accommodations, transportation, finances and international strategies.
Moore said, “there was a clear breaking point at four cities, as opposed to three cities or five, and they best represented which cities should go forward. Three of the four selected cities scored in the top three in all but two of these eight categories. No other city scored in the top three more than once”.
Moore said that the categories of evaluation will change a bit in the next step because the committee must consider things that will make a city a strong international competitor against a field that could include cities like Rome, Berlin, Paris and Toronto.
“We’ll need to take more into account things like diversity, tourism appeal and the number of foreign-born population. That will be a part of the international strategy”.
Moore said the cities would have to answer additional questions on finances and the Paralympics. The task force will provide the cities with a checklist of what it needs on Dec. 7, which they must answer by February, and it will also make new site visits in the spring.
United States Olympic Committee President Sandy Baldwin said she believed any of the eight American cities bidding for the 2012 Games could handle the assignment. She said, “I don’t see this as winners and losers. I believe all eight are great cities…and I would be proud to have the Olympics in any of them”.
She said, “our next step is to pick a winner—not just a national winner in the United States, but a winner who can bring the 2012 Games back to the United States”.
Baldwin said she doesn’t believe the Salt Lake bid scandal will affect the 2005 voting, but the frequency of Games in the U.S. might.
“I think the scandal is largely forgotten”, she said. Mitt Romney has done a wonderful job of righting things and presenting a clean image. But there is some feeling that there is a need to spread the Games around. The problem there is the Games have gotten so big and so difficult to stage that there are many places that just can’t handle it”.
She thinks, too, that the groundswell of support that came in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks might well fade by 2005, when the IOC picks the 2012 host city.
“There’s a lot of short-term memory out there”, she said.
