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USOC visits PSINet and Camden Yards
BALTIMORE (AP) -- U.S. Olympic Committee members on Monday toured a steamy PSINet Stadium, proposed as a potential Olympic soccer venue, and watched a brief video on the Jumbotron screen, showing highlights of the gold medal soccer match from the 2000 Summer Games. The empty stadium echoed with Univision announcer Andres Cantor's trademark roar of "goooaalll!" as the 10 USOC Site Evaluation team members peered down from the top level at the splotchy off-season sod, where soccer goals stood in place of field goals. PSINet would host Olympic soccer matches should the Chesapeake Region 2012 Coalition land the Summer Games. The evaluation team will be in the region until Wednesday, which will end the first in a series of summer visits to examine security, transportation and venues in the eight U.S. cities bidding for the games. The team also toured Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the Baltimore Convention Center, which might be used to stage table tennis. Earlier Monday, the team met with Mayor Martin O'Malley, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Washington Mayor Anthony Williams and other officials. They did not take questions from the media, though they plan a post-visit press conference in Washington on Wednesday. "It's going great. You don't get any direct feedback, but they get a sense that the venues are of high quality," Chesapeake Coalition President Dan Knise said. "I think they're looking at the venues to see if they're real, and I think that's a big piece of this. How real is this? Is it doable?" Knise added. The delegation also visited the University of Maryland in College Park, the proposed site for the Olympic Village, as well as potential venues for volleyball and team handball. In Washington, the team visited the MCI Center and RFK Stadium, the proposed Olympic Stadium. Some of the sites they will visit Tuesday include FedEx Field, George Mason University in northern Virginia and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, the proposed site for fencing, modern pentathlon and beach volleyball. The USOC will list finalists this fall and select a bid city next year. That city will compete against cities from other countries for the 2012 Games, with the site chosen by the International Olympic Committee in fall 2005. The other American cities bidding for the games are Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla. Last month, the Chesapeake region's bid switched its official name to "Washington" instead of "Washington-Baltimore" to meet an IOC requirement that groups have a single-city designation. The 2012 Olympics would bring an estimated $5.3 billion to the Washington-Baltimore-northern Virginia area, $2.5 billion to the state of Maryland and about $1.2 billion to the Baltimore metropolitan area, according to a coalition study.
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