A decision made just before Saturday’s vote to nominate a U.S. candidate for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games has San Francisco officials fearing it could have undermined the United States Olympic Committee’s decision (USOC) not to select San Francisco.
USOC board members were told to ignore one of the Bay Area’s sales pitches – a $400 million surplus that would have been used to fund future U.S. sports programs.
According to published reports, site evaluation leader Charles Moore said he made the decision because some USOC board members raised concerns that the plan amounted to cash for votes. The money would have gone to national sports federations, which accounted for 51 per cent of the bid city vote.
Bay Area bid leader Bob Stiles said, “how could he say that? He took off the table one of our three key concepts. That was on the table since April. That was approved by the site evaluation team in July”.
But some board members say it is doubtful that Moore’s instructions influenced the vote. The Bay Area bid team is considering the best way to question how the election was handled – if not for San Francisco then for future bid cities.
Asked if she would regroup for another try, Bay Area bid leader Anne Cribbs said, “I don’t think that is an option”.
Stiles said the vote for New York didn’t leave him feeling rejected.
“I feel like people failed to grasp the issues. I feel sad for missing the future I so looked forward to. I feel sad the Olympic world will miss its chance to have the Games in San Francisco where they belong”.
New York spent $13 million on the domestic campaign compared with San Francisco’s $4 million, about half which was service-in-kind.
New York Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said, “we weren’t pretending here. We spent millions to create the right plan”.
Doctoroff said the 2012 Games are expected to move the entire West Side stadium project to the front burner. “No question”, he said, “everything we want to do on the West Side is helped”.
Doctoroff said that “an extremely small minority of people who don’t want anything to happen on the West Side” are objecting to a stadium. He added, “my reading is; we’ll get this done”.
