Vote on 2010 Games host has ramifications for many
Posted: Monday June 30, 2003 2:35 PM
At the International Olympic Committee session in Prague on Wednesday, the IOC will select the host city for the 2010 Winter Olympics from among three candidates: Vancouver, British Columbia (the favorite), Salzburg, Austria (a contender), and Pyeongchang, South Korea (the longshot). Here's a look at what each city brings to the table and what the outcome means to others:
Vancouver: The coastal first-time bidder received the best marks during the IOC's recent evaluation visits. The so-called Sea-to-Sky Games would stage most events in, or close to, Vancouver. The one drawback is the lengthy (90 minutes in ordinary traffic) distance to Whistler, site of the snow events. The highway is also known to include some treacherous turns, though the government of British Columbia has allocated $400 million to widen most of the road to three lanes in time for the Games. Vancouver played host to the 2001 World Figure Skating Championships, which were well received. Whistler, known as a world-class ski-resort area, hosted the World Freestyle Ski Championships that year but faced criticism from some spectators, who had trouble gaining access to the mountain. Access to a nearby site is said to be better.
Salzburg: The hub of alpine skiing knows how to throw a party, and because of its history, events held here would be quite compelling. So would the sledding events, since Austria usually fares well in bobsled, luge and skeleton. Still, the preceding Winter Olympics will be held in Torino, Italy, less than 400 miles away. Too close, say some. The venues for the Nordic events are 1,000 feet higher than the village where the athletes would live, which would cause difficulties for those competitors as they tried to acclimate themselves to the conditions.
Pyeongchang: Working against the bid are the scarcity of existing venues, fears about political tensions with North Korea and suspicions that the bid's proposed budget of less than $1 billion has been badly underestimated. Winter sports tradition is not as great in Korea as in Canada or Austria. The country has won 19 of its 20 winter medals in short-track speedskating. With the 2008 Games slated for Beijing, it is unlikely that the IOC will go back to Asia right away.
Vested interests
More is at stake in Prague than just the futures of the bid cities. Here are other interests likely to be affected by the outcome of Wednesday's vote.
Toronto has not yet announced its candidacy for the 2012 Games, and the city's viability rides squarely on the outcome in Prague. If Vancouver wins, Toronto will not bid; if Vancouver loses, Toronto will be a strong candidate. Toronto was an also-ran in the bidding for 2008, which was essentially a referendum on whether the IOC members thought it was time for the Games to go to China. The technical strengths of Toronto, Paris, Osaka and Istanbul, the other 2008 finalists, were afterthoughts. Still, many IOC members who voted for Beijing remarked afterward that they were surprised at the strength of Toronto's presentation, from the city's diverse population to its sporting infrastructure to provincial and national government guarantees of funding.
New York is a little like Beijing in that its story exceeds its technical merits.The Big Apple remains the most notable major city in the world capable of hosting an Olympics that has never done so (or is scheduled to do so). There was great sentimental value in a New York bid soon after the events of Sept. 11, but much of that has faded because of time, U.S. presence in the Middle East, requisite concerns about security, and scandals within the USOC that in the last year have engendered even more ill will among the IOC membership than usual. If Vancouver wins the right to host the 2010 Games, many IOC members will, in the name of geographic rotation, avoid giving the subsequent Olympics to another North American city. Nineteen European IOC members come from countries that are involved in the bid (or likely to announce that they will bid) for the 2012 Games -- including the cities of Paris, London, Madrid, Moscow, Leipzig, Istanbul and perhaps Budapest.
That doesn't mean New York has no chance. The city has a strong bid led by a capable group (Dan Doctoroff, Jay Kreigel and Harvey Schiller) that is much closer in competence to organizers in Salt Lake City than those in Atlanta. Further, the distance between Athens (2004 Summer Games) and Torino (2006 Winter) is much less than the distance between Vancouver and New York. The Big Apple likely will be the next U.S. city to host an Olympics, but a Vancouver victory on Wednesday could increase the wait.
The ski world would love to have another Olympics in Austria. Franz Klammer's frenetic downhill run in Innsbruck in 1976 is still considered one of the most daring and dramatic in history. But Innsbruck is not Kitzbühl. Nothing is. Kitzbühl is Mecca covered in snow flakes to skiers, and the idea of having Olympic ski events in that nearby village makes an Olympics in Salzburg a dream choice for IOC members with ties, however remote, to that sport.
The ice hockey world, on the other hand, needs a Vancouver victory to assure the return of dream teams to the Games. With the NHL's collective-bargaining agreement expiring next year, count on the NHL Players Association to use the inclusion of its high-revenue membership in the Olympics as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the league. Leverage tool or not, the players will not say no to an Olympics in Vancouver, nor to the glory, hoopla, TV ratings and sponsorship opportunities that accompany Olympic heroism. But put those Games in Europe in a country with marginal interest in the sport and a six- to nine-hour time difference, and it is no certainty the NHL's best would return. Stick the Games in Asia again, without Nagano's first-time novelty and an interest level that is two notches lower than in Japan or Austria, and you can forget seeing the dream teams in 2010. Don't expect NHL players to show for only one of the next two Olympics, either. Their presence in Torino three years from now may actually depend on whether Vancouver wins the vote for 2010.
The folks at NBC are likely to get an Olympics in North America, home of primetime-friendly coverage, in either 2010 or 2012. (Dick Ebersol, the head of NBC Sports, has said that he expects Vancouver to get the nod on Wednesday.) The idea of a Summer Games on the East Coast would be fine, but ratings winners in the winter are actually more valuable because fewer people are on vacation, when they would be less likely to watch TV. New series begin in the fall, in time for the return of high TV-watching season. Hence, the numbers from a Winter Olympics on U.S. soil are potentially higher than those for a Summer Games.
Sports Illustrated staff writer Brian Cazeneuve covers Olympic sports for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.
