USOC Set To Pick 2016 Olympic Bidder

Saturday, the United States Olympic Committee will choose their 2016 Olympic bid candidate from Chicago or Los Angeles.

They say they that processes are in place to make the competition constructive, credible and fair. They say that they will watch presentations, look at scores from several technical categories and then vote for the best bid. That's what they say.

Unfortunately since San Francisco is no longer in the running after being forced to withdraw from the competition when stadium plans fell apart - the USOC won't be able to correct their error from 2002, when they selected New York to represent the United States for the 2012 bid. Back then, selection committee chair Charles Moore surprised the electorate with a controversial last minute twist - he told them to disregard San Francisco's biggest strength - a large project surplus. New York won.

Although the USOC later vowed to "reform" the process - now that we're approaching election hour there doesn't seem to be much change for the better. The media are being kept away from key last minute presentations and meetings even though the International Olympic Committee allows full exposure of these events in the "real" 2016 election. You could argue that the USOC wants to keep the secrets of its winning bid under wraps to maintain a competitive advantage over their international competitors; or you could conclude that they don't want the general public second-guessing their decision. Maybe it's a bit of both.

I want to see the presentations because I want to know how Los Angeles will convince anyone that they deserve to host for the 3rd time. Yes, London just recently won the rights to host for a 3rd time - but the last time was in 1948 when they were the only viable post-war option. Los Angeles hosted only 23 years ago, recently enough for many Olympic fans to clearly recall.

If they win the domestic bid, the question will come up over and over - "why a 3rd time?"

It will become annoying and tiresome for the bid committee to answer. And its something that can't be fixed and won't go away. Los Angeles will need a good answer.

For that reason, Chicago should win. They have two years to market their bid and resolve any issues. Chicago's bid is a fresh, new concept - a clean palette on which to paint a potential winner. There is no baggage.

But it doesn't matter what I think. Tomorrow the USOC will figure out a way to make a decision and then they'll tell the world. Then the world will ask, "why a third time"?

Halifax's Scrapped Commonwealth Games Bid Another Canadian Failure

As I write this, the news of Halifax's scrapping of their bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games is very fresh, but the implications are already huge.

I can already feel the anger resonating from Hamilton, Ottawa and Toronto area York Region who were defeated by Halifax as the choice to represent Canada in this bid. The reaction is justified as the three rejected bids were all viable and potentially formidable foes to Glasgow and Abuja - the remaining two cities who will now fight for the hosting privilege. It is now too late for the Canadian Commonwealth Games Committee to submit a new candidate for 2014, a year widely believed to be Canada's turn to host the Games.

This turn of events will likely leave a black mark on Canada and future bids for various international events. Canada will host the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010, but that might be the last big event in Canada for some time.

The Canadian City of Toronto failed in two attempts to host the Olympic Games before Vancouver won the privilege - but since then the leadership in Toronto has changed and the current Mayor couldn't even create a rally behind an intended bid for the 2015 World's Fair and elaborate plans were dropped just a day before the submission deadline.

Now Halifax, after already investing millions of dollars in their bid, has cowardly backed out after the City and the Province of Nova Scotia shied away from committing to increased costs for the project. This sets a very dangerous precedent in Canada that will likely be referenced by other potential city bids for international events in the Country for years to come.

The door may now be shut to Canada for other Commonwealth Games in the near future. The next bid will be for 2018 but will Commonwealth Games Committee voters still have confidence in a Canadian city then? That might not even be an issue should the Games spread to other continents such as Africa and the informal continental rotation rule continue leaving Canada's turn behind.

There will be much more on this issue to come and bid organizers will have many questions to answer. But I'm sure celebrations have erupted in Glasgow - now the odds on favourite to defeat Abuja in the November vote making the remaining 2014 Commonwealth Games race a non-story.

Olympic Bid Evaluation Visits Don't Get The Message Across

This month in PyeongChang and Sochi, the IOC 2014 Olympic Winter Bid Evaluation Committee conducted site evaluations to complement the information gleaned from the bid books they received last month.

The committee will repeat this process next month in Salzburg.

The panel of IOC members, sports leaders and technical experts listened to presentations, visited existing and proposed venues, experienced local culture and asked several questions. Somehow they will convey all of this information to the 100-plus IOC members who are forbidden from officially visiting on their own.

Technically, the absent voting IOC members will get the information from an evaluation report that is published about a month before the bid election. They're intended to use this document that fills about 15 pages per bid as a basis for their vote - one that could shape the future of a city and even a nation.

But how can IOC members be expected to make this decision from ink on paper?

The issue is this: In the fallout of the Salt Lake City vote-buying scandal the IOC Executive Committee agreed to ban official visits of IOC members to bid cities in an effort to curb possible corruption. Basically, the IOC doesn’t trust its own members.

It becomes the job of the Evaluation Commission to be the eyes and ears of the IOC members who will end up casting secret ballots at the July host city election in Guatemala City.

The bid committees know that they cannot rely on the evaluation process to get their messages across to the IOC members who are scattered across the globe. To address this, the IOC has identified several international sports meetings and conferences where bid committees can attend and officially liaise with the IOC members who are present. While extremely important these meetings are limited and may provide only a single opportunity and just a few minutes of face time with key decision makers. Bids are often given only 10 or 15 minutes to present to the group – not nearly enough time to properly convey the value of their complex bid proposals.

The result? Host city election results rarely mirror the reported quality of the bids.

Perhaps this is due to the varied backgrounds and agendas of the voters – some representing specific national Olympic committees or international sports federations, others providing favours for friends especially if their specific interest is in a sport that’s in the other Olympic season. But these conflicts can only be amplified by the absence of more direct decision making opportunities.

So what can the bids’ use as a last resort? The Media.

While extremely inefficient, bid committees must use the mass media to send their targeted messages to the small group of IOC members scattered worldwide. Strong bid promotion domestically has always been an important tool in order to gain local support which is helpful in signing up sponsors and acquiring government backing, but international promotion is now more important then ever, especially for lesser known cities such as PyeongChang and Sochi.

When I spoke with PyeongChang 2014’s Executive President Jin-sun Kim during the IOC visits, he emphasized that one of his fundamental strategies was to relay the bid’s message through the media.

"We will try to communicate without visits; we can utilize the media a much as possible and we hope that the IOC will make a responsible choice.

"It is my sincere belief that if IOC members were to make visits they would make the right decision. Our wish is that the IOC make on-site visits but I see it will be difficult to change the ethics code."

So as much as the pomp and circumstance of the evaluation visits were used to sway the members IOC Evaluation Commission - they were also directed towards the members of the international media who's reporting, images and video may have an even greater impact on IOC members than 15 pages of dry text that may or may not ever be read.

Perhaps the day will come when the IOC regains trust in its members, relaxes the bid visitation rule and give the opportunity for voters to make more informed decisions. Until then cities that vie to host the Olympic Games must be aware – most of your promotional efforts, while necessary, might be wasted.

Struggling Olympic Winter Bids Look To London 2012 For Inspiration

As the IOC site evaluation visits to potential 2014 Olympic hosts draws closer, the bid race seems to be tightening.

With a history full of unpredictability and surprises, the Winter Olympic bid dynamic is not an easy one to understand, and the value of any small advantage is that it can reap huge rewards – especially if you consider that a mere two-vote swing would have resulted in a different winner in the last two Olympic bids.

So what’s a bid to do? It seems they're looking to past winning bids, especially London 2012, for tips - and are following by example.

Sochi, the only current contender that wasn't a finalist last time around, came into this race an underdog. But with nothing to lose and much to gain the team has been very aggressive and have somehow formulated an inspirational Winter Games plan modeled after London's winning Summer Games plan. By creating a massive Olympic park, organizers will ensure that many of the sports venues will be just a stone's throw from the Athletes' Village and the Medals Plaza - just the way everyone likes it. London's winning concept was very similar, and will help revitalize the City's East End and leave a valuable legacy.

But Sochi isn't denying this coincidence. To the contrary, the bid committee chose to unveil their plans right in London just to drive home the point that their bid is backed by winners.

Additionally, the Russian city's bid committee will be sending President Valdimir Putin to the July election in Guatemala to help lobby the IOC members just as Prime Minister Tony Blair did for London at their last mile. It is widely believed that dinner and drinks with IOC members helped Blair swing two or three votes - just enough to put London over the top.

Salzburg's bid came into the race as a soft favourite, but nobody, especially the bid team, could have predicted the rise of Sochi and continued determination of the bid from 2010 runner-up, PyeongChang.

Some of the deficiencies identified by the IOC in Salzburg's proposal have been rectified - and the strong qualities of the bid remain - but the apparent lead seems to be eroding without anything compelling enough happening to stop it. Unless it has already happened in disguise.

Last week Salzburg announce the resignation of bid CEO Fedor Radmann due to reported health problems and amid rumours of a conflict of interest involving a connection with a Sochi sponsor. The bid team responded quickly by appointing Olympic Downhill Champion, national hero and skiing legend Franz Klammer as Chairman International in the interim while a new CEO is found.

Flashback to 2004, the pre-election days of London's 2012 bid when American Barbara Cassani stepped down to allow national hero and Olympic Champion Seb Coe to take over the reigns. At the time, London's bid seemed to be in disarray, often critisized to be hopelessly trailing the favourite bid from Paris. This move, by all accounts, was the clear turning point in the entire 2012 campaign that rerouted London to eventual victory. It seems Olympic heros are the right people to lead Olympic bids, and maybe Salzburg officials were paying attention.

So what about PyeongChang?

Last time around PyeongChang was more like Sochi is this time - an underdog with nothing to lose. The bid was aggressive, took chances and offered lots of surprises. Now the Korean bid finds itself in a precarious situation - since coming in a very close second to Vancouver for 2010, PyeongChang is the de facto bid to beat

In a similar position as Paris while bidding for 2012 (the best remaining candidate from the previous bid), PyeongChang seems to be playing it a bit cautiously - just as Paris did. This is not a comfortable situation for the normally aggressive Koreans who came up with surprise after surprise during their previous campaign, a style that suits them.

But in this intense race it seems that PyeongChang may be getting back into old form. Just last week they announced a partnership with Samsung, the same company that helped them in the final stretch for the 2010 Games.

For 2014, we now have a race with no clear favourite. Any bid can win.

The Stories of 2006

During the holiday season, the sports event bidding world seems to simmer down. There are less press releases - and less news.

Sitting on my desk to mark this lull is the annual holiday greeting card from Korea's Gangwon Province Governor Jin-sun KIM representing PyeongChang 2014, and another from the Salzburg 2014 Olympic bid team.

Our friends over at Around The Rings have been publishing their annual "Golden 25" to fill the seasonal gap in reporting and Time Magazine has just chosen me as "Person Of The Year" (well, me, you and everyone else using the Internet).

Even the media covering the Commonwealth Games bids from Abuja, Glasgow and Halifax seem to have taken off their boxing gloves and temporarily stopped the cheap shots at their respective bid competitors.

This is truly a magical season.

So, like every other niche publication out there - here is my attempt to fill the void by reflecting on the past year we've come to know as 2006.


To Bid Or Not To Bid - That's the USOC's Question

The top Summer Games bid story of 2006 is the United States Olympic Committee's ongoing attempt to choose a candidate to bid (or not to bid) for the 2016 Olympic Games.

Is it a publicity stunt? Is it a way to politically leverage favour with the IOC? Probably both.

The USOC has created a new whimsical method of determining whether to bid for the 2016 Games. First they'll go through the effort of working with and evaluating a group of applicants then they'll decide whether or not to bid.

After "deselecting" applications from Philadelphia and Houston the USOC decided to do a thorough examination of Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco requiring them to create detailed bid proposals and prepare for several meetings and inspection visits. The highly publicized process grabbed headlines throughout the world.

The biggest news came when San Francisco, considered by many as the leading candidate, was forced to withdraw from the contest when a proposed stadium deal fell through and the bid committee was left with no other viable option. San Francisco's collapse was hauntingly familiar to the disgrace experienced by New York's 2012 bid when it was forced to put together a last minute backup plan after its initial stadium deal fell through just days before the IOC host city election.

Only Chicago and Los Angeles remain.

Based on findings so far, the USOC said it will announce its decision to bid or not "by the end of the year". With two days left, we're still waiting. If the answer is yes, the nominated city will be announced by April 2007.

Will the USOC bid for 2016? My guess is "yes". The USOC took a lot of heat when their choice of New York for 2012 backfired after a controversial domestic selection process. The current process is intended to demonstrate to the public, and more importantly voting IOC members, that the decision-making process was not only fair but was designed to "create" a quality winning bid and to minimize the chances of a second consecutive United States bid failing.

The USOC recognizes that 2016 is an opportune window for a United States Olympic Games based on various Olympic geopolitics - and they want to bid. And the IOC needs a U.S. bid and a U.S. Summer Games to continue to fill their coffers. But the IOC and USOC haven't been on the best diplomatic terms recently and USOC Chair Peter Ueberroth is likely playing a poker hand with the 2016 bid being a bargaining chip to be played at some future time.


Blame It On Borat - Almaty Misses 2014 Winter Games Cut

The top Winter Olympic Games bid story of 2006 is Almaty, Kazakhstan's elimination from the 2014 Olympic bid race.

The unlikely bid entered the race at the last minute - but the bid committee worked hard to catch up and presented a very impressive proposal. The IOC evaluation commission agreed, but also recognized some risks and concluded in their report that Almaty "straddled the benchmark" used to qualify a bid. Three bids scored better, three bids scored worse and there was no clear conclusion as to whether Almaty would be accepted as a candidate.

Some sources close to the IOC told me that the inclusion of Almaty as a 2014 candidate came to a vote among 12 Executive Board members resulting in a 6-6 standoff. Then IOC member from Sweden, Gunilla Lindberg, urged the Board not to include a candidate that presented certain "risks" so the final decision was made to exclude Almaty and allow only PyeongChang, Salzburg and Sochi to bid for the games.

To me, this was a monumental decison that might demonstrate the Executive Board's lack of confidence in the entire group of IOC members who will eventually vote on the 2014 winner. It seems Lindberg feared that an inferior bid might be elected contrary to the best interests of the IOC - and the Executive Board needed to mitigate the risk.

The whole issue may have been prompted by the results of the bid for the 2010 Winter Games. Then PyeongChang, the fourth place borderline candidate accepted to bid, outscored two highly-ranked candidates on the first ballot coming just short of a huge upset victory. This was the result of a mish-mash of politics and mixed intentions among voting IOC members.


2007

For 2007 we can look forward to the July election of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games host city in Guatemala followed by the deadline for applicants intending to bid for the 2016 Olympic Games.

In November the Commonwealth Games Federation will choose its 2014 Games host city and in the Spring the International Association of Athletics Federations will choose the host for its 2011 and 2013 Games.

Have a great New Year!