The Hindu : Sport : IOC set to select finalists for 2012 Olympics

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Monday, May 17, 2004

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IOC set to select finalists for 2012 Olympics

LAUSANNE, MAY 16. The IOC meets this week to select a shortlist of finalists for the 2012 Olympics. The question is: How short?

With nine cities in the running, the International Olympic Committee executive board is expected to eliminate at least three candidates and possibly as many as five.

The IOC does not establish a fixed number of finalists, but several members said in interviews that five would be the ideal figure.

Four cities are virtually assured of making Tuesday's cut: Paris, London, New York and Madrid, Spain. One definitely won't: Havana, Cuba.

That leaves four cities on the bubble: Moscow; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Istanbul, Turkey, and Leipzig, Germany. At least two of those could be dropped.

But the race is far from over: The host city will be selected in July 2005 at the IOC session in Singapore. The IOC board begins a three-day meeting on Monday that will review the frantic preparations for the Athens Olympics, less than 90 days away. But the main issue on the agenda is the 2012 contest, which shapes up as the most glamorous bid competition in Olympic history.

Paris remains the city to beat.

IOC president, Jacques Rogge, said last year that the board could retain all nine cities, but has recently acknowledged that some will be weeded out.

"We have all agreed to that," IOC board member Gerhard Heiberg of Norway told Associated Press. "All of us have the same point of view: Nine finalists would not be right. Let's get it down."

Based on the bid documents he has read, Heiberg said "five or six deserve to go through."

British IOC member Craig Reedie was part of the evaluation committee for the 2008 Olympics, in which a 10-city field was reduced to five.

"The 2012 process will work better with a smaller number of candidate cities," he said. "Four cities would be a brave decision and six might be a practical alternative." Moscow, which hosted the 1980 Olympics, might have the best chance of the secondary group of surviving the cut. — AP

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