Now There Are Three

AN STYLE="font-size: 75%; color:#990000; font-weight:bold">Wednesday, May. 16, 2001 And now there are three. The report by the evaluation committee of the International Olympic Committee, presented in Lausanne on Tuesday, left three cities standing in the battle to host the 2008 Olympic Games. Blown away by the report were the bids of Istanbul and Osaka, and left standing -- and smiling broadly -- were the representatives of Paris, Beijing and Toronto.

The report predicted that the Olympics staged in Paris, Beijing and Toronto would be "excellent" -- that's a key code word in the lexicon of the Olympic movement for approval. But the report did not rank the three cities in order. "Excellent is excellent," said Hein Verbruggen, who smoothly and coldly beat off all attempts at getting him to show which city the committee favored.

And so it was left to the representatives of the favored cities to cull the 118- page report, for indications of the individual superiority of the bids. The French, who before the report was issued had been bragging that their effort would be ranked first, remained pleased and confident: "It's a fair report," said Claude Bebear, the president of the Paris bid committee. "It's just what we expected." The Canadians actually counted the number of times the report called Toronto's bid "excellent" and "strong" and claimed that they came out ahead of the other two. All of which shows the level of desperation at this point.

Each bid is eager to somehow find a way of pushing their cause forward with the press, and hereby with the 123 voting members of IOC. The problem for all the bid cities is that the selection of the host city for 2008 is being carried out under new rules devised following the bribery scandal that swirled around the selection of Salt Lake as the host of the 2002 Winter Games. Previously, host cities could wine and dine, gift and even bribe IOC members. And they did. Now members are forbidden to even visit the cities, let alone accept gifts and hospitality. Thus the report -- and the media reporting of its contents -- become crucial.

The final vote will be in Moscow on July 13, and the consensus is that Beijing is considered the leading candidate so far, in part because they lost once before, to Sydney, by two votes. The report does note some negatives for Beijing -- traffic and population problems -- but does not delve into potential political or human rights problems.

But, in the end, the word around town after the report was issued is that the race is still incredibly close. And because the voting is done by elimination, with a city dropped after every round until one gets a clear majority, Beijing's lead in the first round could be whittled away. Stay tuned.