John Rodda
It’s time for that big Olympic Moment – not another medal ceremony but that heart- stopping, economy-booming (or busting) pronouncement which comes twice every four years.
This Friday in the Olympic city of Lausanne Juan Antonio Samaranch, now in his 17th year as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will step up to a podium in the Palais de Beaulieu and say: ”The Games of the 28th Olympiad will be held in the city of … ” Then as his finger catches on the envelope he adds ”… one moment …” which draws whimpering laughs from the banks of tense faces in front of him. Finally he pulls out the sheet of paper and tells the world it is Buenos Aires, or Athens, or Cape Town or Rome or Stockholm who have seven years to get ready for the 2004 Games.
The elation for one delegation will be almost orgasmic; for the four losers the depression will be brutal. Unlike Olympic competition there is no silver medal. For the winners though the emotions must be put on hold as IOC staff gently prise them apart and usher them on stage where a table with six chairs awaits.
The Olympic committee’s president and Marc Hodler, the Swiss chairman of the finance commission, join the winning city’s delegates there and they all sign copious documents of agreement. After Denver reneged on its acceptance to stage the 1976 winter games the IOC decided a tighter hire arrangement of their property was needed. And the winner on Friday will not be allowed to slip away and sign up with Pepsi, American Express and Fuji either, since the IOC is locked into lucrative long-term agreements with Coca Cola, Visa and Kodak. No winner leaves the room until it is committed to putting on Games the committee’s way – and after the near failure of the transport system in Atlanta last year there ought to be a new clause about buses.
This Olympic ritual is as recent as professionalism in the Games. Thirty years ago in Rome Avery Brundage, the then IOC president, shuffled into a tiny press room at the Excelsior Hotel on the Via Veneto and told a small coterie of media men that Munich had beaten Montreal to stage the Games of 1972, but refused to give the voting figures. Four years later, when Britains’s Channel 4 made a documentary entitled How a City Wins the Games, Brundage was persuaded reluctantly to allow committee members to move from their conference room to a theatre in Amsterdam’s RAI centre.
The president walked on stage with an envelope: the winner was Montreal – whereupon the mayor of Moscow walked out in a sulk, drove to the Soviet embassy in The Hague and was never seen again in Holland. Montreal’s mayor Jean Drapeau, looking like the manager of a five-star hotel in his black jacket and pinstripes, remained dignified as the workers on his team dissolved into tears. One IOC member sitting in the front row saw the theatre in it all and, since he became president, has milked the opportunity with ever-increasing flair.
It was, ironically, the decision to give the Games to Montreal which led to the present health and wealth of the Olympic movement. Montreal was a financial catastrophe which still burdens the Canadian city. It frightened off potential Olympic hosts so that, in 1978, only Los Angeles came forward and its organisers set its own terms. It opened up commercial sponsorship avenues and made a surplus of $225-million at the 1984 Games. So in 1986 there were five candidates and four years later six, by which time the excesses of the bidding cities were getting out of hand – not only in gifts but in lobbying techniques.
Samaranch and his executive board brought in an evaluation commission and a selection college as a buffer between the IOC members and the bidding cities. The evaluators go on a whirlwind tour of all the candidates (this time there were 11), combing through their documentation to separate the reality from the romanticism.
Each bid’s organisers present the selection college with tabulated evidence on all the technical details, transport, accommodation and environmental impact. The college of 14 members, none of whom were from candidate countries, met in March to select the final five.
On Friday the IOC members will file on to the stage in their order of membership – which means, sadly, that the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, the doyen, is right at the end of the line. They face an audience of delegates from the five cities plus national Olympic committee members, the heads of the world’s international sporting bodies, VIPs from the Swiss government, delegations from the next Olympic hosts Nagano (winter 1998), Sydney (2000) and Salt Lake City (winter 2002), and of course the media. Altogether 3 000 people are accredited for the event which, with the gymnastics world championships going on in the city at the same time, will put a strain on communications.
The preamble to the announcement is reminiscent of the Eurovision Song Contest, with the event beamed by satellite (for which the IOC pays) to the candidate cities where parties are under way. The audience in the palais will see them on big screens as the two presenters do their stuff. ”Come in Cape Town … ” For the winner the decision can mean a 2,5 billion injection into the city’s (and country’s) economy. When Birmingham bid in 1986 it spent just over 2-million on its campaign, and the city auditor determined there was a 5,2- million return for this losing investment.
The power to choose the Olympic venue rests with the IOC members. They are advised, consulted, flattered, wined, dined, some say even bribed for their vote – but only they can determine the outcome.
With such a prize stories of corruption abounded until Samaranch changed the rules after a pretty wild series of exchanges in the run-up to the 1986 decision. At that time the winter and summer votes were taken at the same meeting so, during a session of the IOC in Seoul a year earlier, the bidding cities staged five parties in one day with the soon-to-be French prime minister Jacques Chirac hosting the Paris lunch which saw ’78 claret slopped out like Coca-Cola.
But even with all the curbs Samaranch introduced – no present to an IOC member should be worth more than $200 – Sydney snatched victory from Beijing four years ago in Monte Carlo when, hours before the vote, the Sydney chairman John Coates promised an African member of the commission more sports scholarships in Australia for Africans. The member thus switched his allegiance and Sydney won by two votes.
There are also stories of doubled up first- class air tickets, and Atlanta certainly offered plenty of rounds of golf at Augusta, the home of the Masters, to visiting members. With the international federations now ensuring formity of sports facilities, choosing a city comes down to personal preference.
If the original Olympic charter’s edict of spreading the Games around the world (now dropped) is to be followed then Cape Town and Buenos Aires, who have never staged them, might have a better chance than observers think. But in the end it will go to a place people like – or as Dick Pound, a member of the IOC executive committee, once put it, ”voting for people we are comfortable with”.
While many of the IOC members are retired, others need to think about where best to spend three weeks away; the spouse factor is something bidding cities work on. That is why they could not understand the crassness of the British entering Birmingham and Manchester (twice) when there was London to be enjoyed.
I have never seen money change hands but one IOC member was quite open that he took his family to Paris for eye treatment while examining their candidature. During a press trip to see what the city could do, we were driven round in Renault 25s with five or six police outriders clearing the way. When one of us complained we got wet in the rain walking from the car to a building, we returned to the George V hotel to find macs on our beds. There had already been champagne and perfume.
But the thought ”if they’re doing this for a journalist what are they doing for IOC members?” came to mind more strongly on a trip to Atlanta. I wanted to try their subway because I knew it would be a key factor in their transportation if they won the Games.
My trip was arranged one early morning to fit in with an engagement out at Georgia Tech. I was met at the station by the head of the subway system plus a photographer and security men. We went down the elevator just as a train pulled in. I was ushered aboard and was given the promotional spiel as we sped through station after station without stopping. When we arrived at our destination I watched the train pull out as my host continued his talk.
”Hey, the train is empty. Is there normally no one travelling at this time?” ”Oh, we put this one on for you sir.”
A gesture of power perhaps, but I wondered what more might have been on offer had I been able to put a cross on a voting paper.