The five-city race to capture sport’s most glittering prize — the right to host the Olympics — has been reduced to a battle of two cities, International Olympic Committee (IOC) sources said in Singapore on Tuesday.
Only 24 hours before the rank and file members of the IOC will decide the winner of the 2012 Games, IOC sources have said it is down to London and Paris.
”Nearly all the members have already made up their mind and it has come down to Paris and London,” one senior IOC member said.
If he is correct, it will be a bitter blow to Madrid, Moscow and New York, who have been frantically trying to woo the 99 members who will be voting.
Former United States first lady Hillary Clinton flew to Singapore in a private plane before dawn on Tuesday and after breakfast immediately began contacting IOC members to push the case for the ”Big Apple”.
While the Paris bid awaited the arrival on Tuesday of French President Jacques Chirac, British Prime Minister Tony Blair continued to hold private face-to-face talks with IOC members in a suite at the Raffles City Convention Centre.
”He was very pleasant,” one European IOC member said after visiting Blair and bid leader Seb Coe. ”He is very effective and I can think of some members who could perhaps be swayed to vote for London. After all, he is the prime minister.”
Blair has also be using his contacts with other world leaders in a bid to boost London’s chances of upsetting the French capital, which has been the front-runner.
He is hoping foreign leaders sympathetic to Britain will convince their own IOC members to switch their support to London.
All of the IOC members contacted by news agency AFP declined to call the result.
”It is the tightest race I have ever seen,” said Australian IOC member Phil Coles.
IOC president Jacques Rogge, who will not vote, has no doubt it will be close.
”There will be no question of there being a difference of 30 votes, such as [those which] separated Beijing and Toronto for 2008. The difference between the winner and the second might not exceed a half-a-dozen votes,” said Rogge recently.
London is believed to have been counting on the support of the three Australian IOC members — Coles, Kevan Gosper and John Coates — because of the Commonwealth ties.
But Gosper said the block vote of the Commonwealth in the old days no longer exists.
”I don’t think Phil, John and I are voting the same way. I think a lot of the Commonwealth countries from the Caribbean may support New York, and it’s hard to pick where the African countries may go,” said Gosper.
All five cities are hoping their final presentations to the IOC session on Wednesday will convince the non-committed, but sources say that no more than 10 IOC members are undecided.
”I think the presentations are more likely to cost a city votes rather than win it votes. I know who I am voting for and I will only change my mind if there is something in my chosen city’s presentation that I don’t like or think is wrong,” one South American IOC member said. — Sapa-AFP