PARIS, 17 January 2004 — Olympic frontrunners Paris launched their bid for the 2012 Summer Games with a glitzy ceremony at the Eiffel Tower yesterday.
Second favorites London got their campaign off at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden after the nine cities vying for the right to host the 2012 Olympics met Thursday’s midnight deadline.
Paris, London, New York, Moscow, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Leipzig, Havana and Istanbul make up the biggest field of Olympic candidates after the 1997 vote for the 2004 Games when 10 cities went into the ring against eventual winners Athens.
France was then represented by Lille, Russia by St. Petersburg and Spain by Seville. Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro were also competing. In fact, this is the fourth Olympics in a row Istanbul has bid for.
“We’re delighted by this show of interest,” said IOC President Jacques Rogge. “There’s a long haul ahead for the candidates but we wish the nine cities good luck and a fair competition.”
Already London, New York and Paris have received warning letters.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair angered the IOC ethics commission, set up to monitor bidding campaigns following the 2002 Salt Lake City cash-for-votes scandal, when he mentioned London’s bid at a meeting of Commonwealth heads in Nigeria late last year. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe upset the commission by claiming that Paris and the French government were more united over the Paris bid than London Mayor Ken Livingstone and the Blair government were over London.
The IOC’s executive board could draw up a short list at its May 18 meeting in Lausanne.
However, Rogge has several times insisted the nine are so strong that all of them could be in the final vote by the 125 IOC members at Singapore on July 6, 2005.
Paris was humiliated in its bid for the 2008 Olympics. The current bid committee members acknowledge they were hurt by the perceived arrogance of the French who were too confident their business plan would win the day in Moscow in 2001 and forgot to go out amongst the 125 IOC members and press flesh.
Paris finished behind Beijing, Toronto and Istanbul in the first round of voting and improved only by one place, ahead of Istanbul, in the second round which clinched the issue for Beijing.
However, Paris was also fighting a near impossible battle against Beijing and outgoing IOC President Juan-Antonio Samaranch’s determination to give China the Games before he stepped down.
Samaranch also frustrated Paris when it bid to stage the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, losing out to the Catalan’s hometown of Barcelona. But the French scored a major win over England last year when they won the right to stage the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
Paris, which successfully staged the 1998 World Cup soccer tournament, will center its bid around the 80,000 capacity Stade de France, the Roland-Garros tennis stadium and the Longchamps racecourse. Yachting will be held at the Atlantic port of La Rochelle.
Fourteen of the 32 stadiums needed for the Games are already built and bid committee director Essar Gabriel has promised there will be no white elephants which will be left to rust once the Games are over. Paris says it is spending around $25 million on its bid and the estimated cost for the Games is $6.9 billion.
