London pulled off a stunning come-from-behind victory to beat Paris and win the 2012 Olympics in Singapore on Wednesday.
It is believed that the final vote by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) members was 54-50.
It was an amazing victory for bid leader and two-time Olympic champion Sebastien Coe, who was brought in last year to replace American Barbara Cassani who quit as leader of the London 2012 team.
London’s bid was trailing badly behind the French and looked doomed.
But Coe, along with businessman Keith Mills, turned everything around and on Wednesday the tens of thousands of kilometres flying the world to seal the bid paid off in spectacular style.
It was also a massive personal victory for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who flew into Singapore three days before the IOC members voted to hold a series of private one-on-one meetings with the members to sell the bid.
Nearly 20 members were escorted up to a special suite in the Swiss hotel over Monday and Tuesday to meet the prime minister.
Moscow, New York and Madrid were all eliminated in three rounds of voting by the IOC members present, leaving London and Paris as the two survivors and one of them sure of victory.
When Rogge opened the envelope baring the winner’s name and read out London, the London bid team jumped to their feet.
Coe was embraced by everyone around him.
Across the aisle, the French team sat in stunned disbelief.
It was the third time in 20 years that the French capital had been rejected by the IOC.
And it was a bitter blow for French President Jacques Chirac, who has been personally involved in all three Paris bids — once as mayor of Paris and twice as president.
The 72-year-old Chirac had flown into Singapore on Tuesday afternoon so he could address the IOC Session during Paris’s final presentation.
The French team were hoping that the presence of Chirac would clinch victory for a bid that has been the front-runner since the campaign began.
But in the end the IOC decided that London, which last held the Games in 1948, should have 2012.
The match-up between Blair and Chirac, set amid a backdrop of barely disguised personal animosities and traditional British-French rivalries, was one of the most intriguing aspects of the final few hours of campaigning.
The rivalries flared on Monday when consultants to the London Olympic bid in Singapore criticised Paris’s Stade de France, a centrepiece of the French capital’s campaign, in apparent breach of the IOC rules.
The Paris delegation reacted with some barbs of its own, with Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe quick to take the moral high ground.
”I think that to deserve victory you have to respect the Olympic spirit and demonstrate fair play,” Delanoe said when asked about the remarks.
Chirac himself added to the tensions with comments published in the French newspaper Liberation on Monday ridiculing British cooking.
”The only thing they have done for European agriculture is ‘mad cow [disease]’,” he reportedly said during a weekend meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
”You can’t trust people who have such lousy cooking,” Chirac added, labelling British cooking the worst in Europe apart from that of Finland.
In London, a crowd of 4 000 people whooped and cheered as they saw the result live on two giant television screens erected in Trafalgar Square.
Union Jack flags and balloons waved as Londoners celebrated in the square, which aptly features Nelson’s Column dedicated to Admiral Horatio Nelson, who 200 years ago defeated the French at the Battle of Trafalgar, effectively ending Napoleon’s ambitions of invading England.
A groan of disappointment swept through Paris. In front of the City Hall, thousands of people who had been expecting to celebrate victory looked downcast and some let out boos as the news was broadcast live on two big video screens.
Landmark venues
Sports temples such as Wembley, Wimbledon and Lord’s as well as a brand-new 80 000-capacity Olympic Park will be the main venues for London’s 2012 Olympics.
Tourist landmarks will be transformed, with Hyde Park becoming the site for triathlon and road-cycling events, Horse Guards Parade for beach volleyball and Regent’s Park for baseball and softball.
The £757-million new Wembley Stadium, due to be finished in 2006, will host both the men’s and women’s football finals, while tennis will be held at Wimbledon.
Lord’s — the home of cricket — will swap bats for bows with archery events planned at the world-famous ground in St John’s Wood, north London.
Football matches in earlier rounds will be played across the country at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, Glasgow’s Hampden Park, Windsor Park in Belfast, Manchester’s Old Trafford, Newcastle’s St James’s Park and Villa Park in Birmingham.
Brand-new facilities will be built in an Olympic park in east London as part of plans to regenerate the rundown area.
The main site in the Lower Lea Valley will boast an 80 000-seat stadium for athletics and the opening and closing ceremonies.
Nearby will be an aquatic centre for swimming and diving events and a velodrome for track cycling.
Visitors will be able to move from venue to venue within the park along wide, sweeping pedestrian walkways.
The site will also contain an Olympic village for competitors, a hockey stadium and a multisport complex for basketball, handball, volleyball and modern pentathlon events.
The ill-fated Millennium Dome will be used for artistic gymnastics, trampolining, basketball and handball finals, while Greenwich Park will host the equestrian, modern pentathlon riding and running events.
Alexandra Palace in north London will be used for fencing competitions.
Outside of London, the Eton College Rowing Centre at Dorney Lake near Windsor, has been selected as the venue for rowing and flat-water canoeing, while shooting will take place at Bisley in Surrey and mountain biking in Swinley Forest, Berkshire.
Sailing will be staged at Weymouth-Portland.
The London bid committee estimates the Games will cost £2,3-billion.
This was London’s first bid after failures by Birmingham for the 1992 Games and Manchester for the 2000 Games.
London staged the 1908 and 1948 Olympics. The city was host for the first time in 1908 when Rome withdrew. — Sapa-AFP