Although he said “I can’t explain it. I’m the guy running the whole thing, and I can’t explain it”, USOC evaluation team chairman Charles H. Moore announced last Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. Chicago time that New York and San Francisco made the short list of two cities vying to become the U.S. candidate for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
The Washington Post’s Amy Shipley reports that of the 10 site team members voting with two votes each, New York received nine votes, San Francisco six, Washington had five and Houston was eliminated without received any votes.
Early in the day when the team saw its scores together for the first time they were surprised to find that the race among the top three cities was too close to call using numbers alone.
Dozens of pages of rankings, ratings and scores assembled by the team to use in its decision were set aside in the final decision.
By the end of the day, reports the Post, site team members made their selection based on hours of discussion and gut feelings.
“We felt San Francisco and New York were infinitesimally more electable than Washington. …We had to pick a great technical bid. We also had to pick someone that would get elected by the IOC. The bottom line is we had a lot of discussion about that”, Moore said Friday.
The Post reports that in three scoring tables that were tabulated differently using all of the ratings, Washington, New York and San Francisco each finished in the top two at least twice, and in two of the three, there was a tie for first place.
Finance was one area that received a lot of discussion. New York’s bid had been criticized for its more than $4 billion in construction projects – far more than any other bid city. The high costs were a concern. U.S. IOC members interviewed by Moore warned that excessive construction projects and high building costs would be frowned on by the IOC and its president Jacques Rogge who has stressed that the Olympic Games should be smaller and less expensive.
But New York’s bid group, at the request of the site team, provided documentation that showed New York City handles an average of about $12 billion in construction projects each year.
New York also sent a letter stating that the $1 billion in proposed Olympic housing would be built even if New York did not win the Olympics.
There was also evidence of the New York Jets’ willingness to go ahead on a planned $3 billion Olympic Stadium in Manhattan as well as details of a back-up plan in Flushing Meadows.
The team members decided that in finance, as in most of the other areas, the three top cities weren’t that far apart.
Moore said, “this was so close you would not believe it. Finally we had to get off the scoring stuff. We were never going to get anywhere there”.
Moore decided to ask members to vote for their top two cities in a secret ballot and preferences became clear for the first time. San Francisco scored the highest, New York was second and Washington was third. After that vote the numbers were discarded.
Moore and several other team members had made contact with many officials, international friends, and associates about the bid cities and received their comments.
The Post says dozens of issues were then discussed and debated.
Nearing the deadline for the decision to be announced, discussion continued until at 3:00 p.m. it was time to vote. Each member had two votes. No one was asked to explain his or her choice, but it was clear that New York was in first place with San Francisco in second place, and Washington a close third. And the announcement was made.
