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China scores decisive victory
Updated: Sunday July 15, 2001 10:32 AM
MOSCOW -- As IOC members took their vote in the World Trade Centre here on Friday afternoon to decide the host city of the 2008 Olympics, a crowd of journalists and bid-team members gathered around a huge screen in the lobby of the adjacent Hotel Mezhdunarodnaya, where the IOC members are staying. As soon as Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC's outgoing president, announced Beijing as the winner, the athlete members of Toronto's team began hugging and crying, fully convinced that theirs was a superior bid that had been undone by overriding political considerations. Behind them, the cheering Chinese journalists began congratulating each other, since members of their bid committee had all congregated in the large conference hall where the winners were announced. One man opened a bottle of wine and began passing it around. It was an odd lesson in journalistic ethics and culture. For the Chinese, there was no separation of bid and state. "This is a national and cultural victory for our country and our people," Deng Yaping, a 1992 and '96 double gold medalist in table tennis and a member of Beijing's committee, said to a reporter from the Xinhua News Agency. Then her interviewer bowed to her and hugged her.
Some IOC members backed Beijing's victory on sporting grounds. "This is a fully developed country that has held over 50 international championships in the last 10 years," says Australia's Kevan Gosper. "If you judge them on the sporting process, they are an excellent choice." Switzerland's Marc Hodler, the whistle blower in the Salt Lake City bid scandal, said Beijing's presentation was considerably stronger than the one the city mounted for the right to host the 2000 Games (Beijing lost that election to Sydney by two votes). "Last time most of the members required translators," Hodler said. "This time most of the members of the group spoke perfect English. And they pointed out that 400,000 high school students in Beijing are required to pass an English course. That's proof that China wants to open up not only economically, but also culturally." Belgium's Jacques Rogge, a leading candidate to win the IOC presidency on Monday, also felt that the committee was more comfortable with taking a gamble on China now. "Think of 1993 [the year of the vote for the 2000 Games]," said Rogge. "It was after the Berlin Wall fell. In Europe the Soviet Union had just disappeared. There was an economic crisis. I think there was a question about whether those events in the world would somehow contaminate China. Instead we went to Australia for safety. It was an excellent decision. This time there is not the fear over those changes." Still, the decisiveness of the vote stunned many members. "Nobody should be surprised by their victory," said Italy's Ottavio Cinquanta, "but maybe shocked by the size of their win." Added Norway's Gerhard Heiberg, "Toronto made an excellent presentation here, but more members than we anticipated had already made up their minds that it was time to go to China one way or the other." Beijing won the necessary majority on just the second ballot, collecting 56 votes of 105 cast. Paris, which was expected to put up a greater fight, managed just 18 votes in the final round. "When you get 15 votes and then 18, it's hard to take," said French IOC member Jean Claude Killy, who actively supported the Paris bid and was not allowed to vote while a city from his country was in the running. "It's not that we lost. We felt it would go to Beijing, but for Paris to get so few votes. ... At some point the Games must come back to France, but I don't want it to take 50 years. We have 10, 15 votes missing from countries who want the Games in 2012." Killy said that this margin of defeat may make it hard for Paris to try for the next Games. "If we had been second, the bid would have been revived immediately," he said. "Now it will take a couple of weeks to decide if it is worth it to bid again." So now comes the hard part. How does the IOC make sure that Beijing addresses not only human-rights issues, but also adheres to rules about doping and environmental protection in the run-up to the Games? "We will supervise our own responsibilities," Rogge said. "We are not there to supervise China as a whole." This sort of answer scares some IOC members, who wonder privately if the committee's avowed goal of positively impacting the world would be undermined if it appears too complicit with any Chinese transgressions. "The only thing the IOC can hold over a city is that it can always take away the Games," said U.S. member Bob Ctvrtlik. "It's one of those unwritten rules you never want to talk about, but if holding the Games in a city would jeopardize the lives of athletes, there is always that remedy. I don't know that there is another remedy." Ctvrtlik said that there was a split vote among the IOC's 15 recently elected athlete members: "Members of the athletes' commission went down the middle, for and against," he said. "We knew a vote for Beijing could expose billions of people to the values of Olympism. That was a powerful argument. It seemed to turn into a Beijing or anti-Beijing vote, which didn't seem fair to the other candidates, but the vote was Beijing's to lose and it didn't lose it." Sports Illustrated staff writer Brian Cazeneuve covers Olympic sports for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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