OLYMPIC GAMES RACE TO STAGE 2016:IF YOU like your politics straight and with a kick, you will enjoy the next week or so as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gathers in Copenhagen to choose which of four bidding cities will stage the 2016 Olympic Games.
The IOC is to ordinary politics as high-stakes Texas Hold’em is to your granny’s weekly pontoon. For the addict it is politics at its most pure, its most complex and its most vicious.
The quadrennial bidding process, which shouldn’t be confused with anything very much to do with sport, is one of the showcase bouts for IOC politicians and lobbyists.
In Denmark (no jokes please about something rotten in the state thereof), Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo will send forth their representatives, their movers and their shakers, their meeters and their greeters, their pols and their lobbyists, to prostrate themselves before the panjandrums of the IOC.
The voting process will culminate on Friday, with each city allowed a 45-minute presentation followed by a QA session. After two years minimum of hard lobbying and campaigning by each city, there will, of course, be no real questions left to ask. But the identity of each questioner and nature of each question asked will be a coded message to the other voters as to the shifting geopolitics which affect this high-stakes game.
Ireland’s sole IOC member, Pat Hickey, is predicting a cliffhanger – unless Chicago pulls a president out of the bag.
“Rio has come with a very good run and good lobbying and impressed a lot of people, and they would be neck and neck with Chicago now. If Chicago can pull out a visit from Barack Obama, though, it could be game over, strange as it sounds.”
On a visit to Ireland earlier this year IOC president Jacques Rogge met Taoiseach Brian Cowen and was told Ireland would prefer a success for Chicago.
Hickey’s cards are being played close to his chest, but historically he has been an excellent reader of the winds blowing within the IOC.
Going to Copenhagen this week Chicago are marginal favourites, but that means nothing. Four years ago, in Singapore, the delegation from Paris arrived as healthy favourites and behaved with a Gallic confidence.
Jacques Chirac made a short visit on behalf of the Parisian bid and left again. Tony and Cherie spent two days working the joint as feverishly as two rats in heat. London won the 2012 Games partly because of the excellence of its schmooze.
Anything could happen to Chicago next week. If, as has been heavily hinted, President Obama joins his wife, Michelle, in the Danish capital, his presence, along with that of Chicago’s other global icon, Oprah Winfrey (Michael Jordan is also having his arm twisted), will likely prove the tipping point that gives the Games to Chicago by an easy margin.
The word yesterday from IOC sources in Denmark was that Obama would be joining the Chicago bid team for their presentation to the IOC on Friday morning and speaking to the members during that time. It is suggested he will remain in Denmark till that afternoon before returning to Washington.
After years of evaluations of the bidding cities and examinations of the financial guarantees on offer, a large proportion of the IOC constituency will vote on the basis of vanity. For a hard-core of IOC members a photograph shaking Barack Obama’s hand and pretending to share a joke would override everything else.
But, but, but. The city with the most momentum going into the vote is Rio de Janeiro. At each stage of the bidding process, when presentations have been required, Rio has outperformed its rivals with its slick and sexy packaging.
Selling itself with an appealing mix of offering a new frontier for Olympism (the Games have never been to South America) and opening a new segment of the global market, the bid has been backed by an army of the best lobbyists in the game. Even Chicago, the home of Mayor Daley and a city whose ward politics make Tammany Hall look like the Boys Sodality, has been outhustled up till now.
Spare a thought for Tokyo, who have put together what most observers agree is the best technical bid, a city which can point to Japan’s lavish and successful role in staging the 2002 World Cup. But Tokyo’s bid is suffering greatly from Asia Fatigue among IOC members, who spent so much time in Beijing both before and during last year’s games they aren’t ready yet to commit to another games in the region.
That leaves Madrid, a pleasant city without the spectacular, TV-friendly backdrops of Chicago or Rio but which has the backing of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. Although much new blood has flowed into the IOC since Samaranch moved into retirement, he still commands the loyalty of a swathe of members whom he personally steered onto the committee.
So Tokyo, on the basis of sympathy and recognition, for the excellence of its bid and the convincing financial underpinning they have offered, may just receive enough first-round votes to inadvertently knock out one of the two frontrunners to whom IOC members intend to revert their votes in later rounds.
The same is true of Madrid. Fond memories of the Barcelona Games still linger for the IOC, and Samaranch’s muscle might pry away enough of the Spanish/Latino voting block for them to do some damage to Rio in the first round.
What works against Spain, though, is all the other agendas at play.
France will have bids in for the 2018 Winter Games and the 2020 Summer Games. Rome and Prague will also have bids in for 2020, while the Russian city of Sochi has the 2018 Winter Games.
That is a significant block of voters who recognise that another European Games in 2016 (the third European-based Olympiad in succession if you count the 2014 Winter Games) would effectively scupper their chances.
So it will come down, it seems, to Rio and Chicago. What works for each bid first up is the beauty of the backdrop they offer and the convenience with which their time zones fit into US TV scheduling.
What works against each city might be more complex. Rio will fret over the first round when many of the Spanish, Portuguese or Latino members will honour commitments to vote for Madrid, intending to get behind Rio at a later stage.
Rio’s bid has also met criticism on the theme of safety and security, and there are worries the Games would appear like leftovers for which there might be neither sufficient enthusiasm or cash with the country already committed to staging the 2014 World Cup.
Chicago’s problems are slightly different. There is continuing resentment among IOC members about the deal made (in perpetuity) with the US Olympic Committee (USOC) which guarantees the USOC 12.75 per cent of all Olympic TV rights money and 20 per cent of global sponsorship revenues. For the Olympic cycle from 2009 to 2012 the USOC will duly receive some €300 million.
The remaining 204 Olympic nations will share slightly less than that between them.
The Americans have always countered that they put in more. NBC’s rights payment for Beijing, for instance, was €600 million, roughly twice the amount expended by the European broadcast networks. Peter Ueberroth, who masterminded the groundbreaking, 1984 Games in Los Angeles and later made the deal as USOC president, has pointed out, somewhat stridently, that US corporations have since 1998 contributed 60 per cent of the IOC’s income.
Fortunately for Chicago, Ueberroth’s successor, Larry Probst, has struck a more conciliatory note and negotiations have started on reducing the size of the USOC’s share.
Still, there is a residual resentment for all things American in some quarters of the IOC.
The Atlanta Games of 1996 were the worst in living memory, and a perceived hypocrisy, especially on matters relating to doping as well as American military engagements, have all helped subtract from America’s old influence.
In the voting in Singapore in 2005 during the last process, New York, which hoped it would be riding a wave of sentiment post-9/11, received just 16 votes in the second round, a third of which would have come from American voters.
So, to claim the Games, Chicago is going to need Mayor Richard Daley to get the vote out in old Chicago style. Michelle Obama’s radiant glamour, while helpful, will only serve to remind IOC voters that her main squeeze isn’t on her arm.
If the IOC can bask in the glow of the world’s most charismatic couple, however (apologies to Bod ’n’ Amy), the Summer Games should be returning to the States after a 20-year absence.
Chicago
City population: Three million
Regional population: Eight million
Olympic Stadium: New venue, capacity 80,000
Slogan: A games at the heart of the city
Average proposed ticket cost: €48
Celebrity trump card: Barack and Michelle Obama; Oprah Winfrey
Madrid
City population: Three million
Regional population: Six million
Olympic Stadium: New venue, capacity 65,000
Slogan: Hola everyone
Average proposed ticket cost: €56
Celebrity trump card: King Juan Carlos
Rio
City population: Six million
Regional population: 12 million
Olympic Stadium: Joao Havelange Stadium, capacity 45,000 (to be used for athletics). Maracana, capacity 90,000, for football, opening, closing ceremonies
Slogan: Live your passion
Average proposed ticket cost: €25
Celebrity trump card: President Luiz Inacio; Lula da Silva; Pele
Tokyo
City population: 13 million
Regional population: 35 million
Olympic Stadium: New venue, capacity 100,000
Slogan: Uniting our worlds
Average proposed ticket cost: €59
Celebrity trump card: Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama
