Madrid ready for 2016 Olympic bid inspection

MADRID (AP) -Madrid will welcome the International Olympic Committee's evaluation team Monday with high hopes, although experience has kept bid leaders realistic.

The IOC's team arrives for the last of its 2016 Games inspection tours after visiting Chicago, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro.

IOC chairwoman Nawal el Moutawakel said the evaluation team was "impressed'' with each of those, and Madrid bid chief Mercedes Coghen doesn't expect the Spanish capital's presentation to change the IOC's careful vocabulary.

"I'm not expecting to hear anything different because they are very well-mannered people,'' Coghen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "All four cities have great projects, and I think that seems to be a very smart way of summing it up.''

It's the second time that the IOC is evaluating Madrid, which also bid for the 2012 Games.

Coghen believes Madrid could have one advantage for the tired inspectors following all the travel, jet-lag and the continuous change of time zones: they are already familiar with Madrid's project.

"The city has changed, the project has changed and we want to show this. But the advantage is that for some things they'll have to ask less questions,'' Coghen said. "There are fewer surprises. And the previous process was very concrete so they'll arrive with that in mind.''

Madrid believes that another plus is that 77 percent of the city's installations have already been constructed. The majority of the competition venues will be within the Olympic village - the "heart'' of the project - just on the outskirts of the city center.

A major regeneration project along the city's Manzanes River will also mean extra parks and pedestrian areas for future generations on a site that organizers have called the "lungs'' of the project.

Coghen said Monday's welcome would be low-key before the real evaluation process begins Tuesday, when IOC inspectors will be able to ask questions on all aspects of the bid.

The team will inspect venues Wednesday and Thursday, traveling aboard hybrid buses which are inline with Madrid's promise to hold a green games. But bid organizers won't use the metro to get around with a strike expected this week.

Coghen, a gold medallist in field hockey at the 1992 Barcelona Games, called those two days "key.''

"This plays a huge influence on our Olympic project,'' she said.

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, who will lead Madrid's delegation at the deciding vote in Copenhagen on Oct. 2, will send the committee off on Friday after a royal lunch.

Coghen is hopeful that public support remains high even after Tokyo published a survey suggesting that the Japanese capital's enthusiasm over the Olympics had dipped slightly.

"I hope people are still excited,'' Coghen said. "Everyone in the world is having problems and people are therefore slightly less excited, naturally.''

Madrid's government has already committed to the project and has guaranteed to cover any surplus costs to the proposed ?4.4 billion ($5.6 billion) budget.