And the Winner Is ...

AN STYLE="font-size: 75%; color:#990000; font-weight:bold">Monday, July 16, 2001

MOSCOW -- The word, at long last, came at 6:11 p.m. local time, on a miserably hot and humid Friday the 13th. And it surprised precious few among the thousands of journalists and Olympic observers who had crowded into the Moscow hotel and business center where the International Olympic Committee members had sequestered themselves all day. Truth be known, even few of the lobbyists from the bid cities who had made the trip to Moscow for one final pitch were surprised by the outcome. They did not get it in the first round, but the Chinese capital Beijing will be the venue for the 2008 Games.

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Last Friday, the five bid cities (Paris, Toronto, Beijing, Osaka and Istanbul) made their final pitches -- most featured slick promotional videos -- in the hotel's massive conference hall. The French, naturally, provided the best entertainment. Represented by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, their presentation featured the most expensive football star in the world, Zinedine Zidane. Wearing a dark blue suit, the sportsman weighed in on the emotional importance of France's World Cup soccer win. The French also offered the members an alluring short film of Paris, complete with a booming Edith Piaf soundtrack.

The Canadians were led by Prime Minister Jean Chretien. But what stole the IOC members' attention -- and startled more than a few -- was the crew of Native Canadians dancing and drumming down the aisles. Presumably, the dancers were intended as a gesture to apologize for Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman's bon mot, when he said on the eve of an Africa trip that he could see himself "in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me." However, the dancers produced the opposite effect -- they only reminded the media and the IOC members of the mayor's memorable gaffe.

The Chinese made the modest of public pleas. President Jiang Zemin wasn't flying in to Moscow until Sunday, but the Chinese were amply represented. And on Thursday, Wang Wei, chair of Beijing's bid committee, had masterfully managed a press conference in which most of the questions concerned human rights and free speech in China. He vowed that "we will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China."

Then came the vote. As scheduled, voting began just after 5 p.m., Moscow time, but there was no word of a winner until just after 6 p.m. The first round of voting had not yielded a winner. (Beijing got 44 votes, while Osaka got just 6 votes and was eliminated.) The four cities then moved into a second round of voting, in which Beijing got a majority -- 56 votes. Toronto came in second with 22 votes, followed by Paris with 18 and Istanbul 9.

The IOC is a notoriously closed club. And it did not take members long to turn the hotel (renamed the World Trade Center) into a giant clubhouse as secretive and off-bounds as a Masonic Lodge in the Midwest. Few IOC members were willing to discuss the vote. A number of them, however, did describe mixed feelings, and talked of wrestling with their decision. A small clutch of European members made it clear that they did not think a candidate nation's human rights record should decide the fate of their bid. Throughout the day, many parroted the oft- expressed hope that the Games would force a closed society to open up.

The IOC's Russian hosts were more than welcoming, eager to seize the international limelight. President Vladimir Putin welcomed Samaranch and other IOC officials in the Kremlin on Thursday. "As the 21st century begins, we are convinced we must fight and win only in peaceful, honest competitions," Putin said. "We must remain faithful to Olympic ideals and principles." Samaranch, in thanking Putin, seemed to hint at a Chinese win, assuring the Russian President that, "This session will be a historic one."

Putin also hosted the IOC delegates at a special Bolshoi Theater gala. The dancers, however, were not very pleased. They had to postpone their summer vacations to perform Samaranch's favorite ballet, Giselle. The Russians all along have made little secret of their support for the Chinese bid. With NATO bent on expanding eastward into the old Soviet bloc, Russia has eagerly warmed to Beijing. It was no accident that before meeting George W. Bush in Slovenia, Putin made sure to grab a photo opportunity with the Chinese leadership in Beijing.

Not all in Moscow, however, blessed the vote. Liberal Duma deputy Sergei Kovalyov, arguably the leader of the vestigial dissident intelligentsia of the Soviet era, was quick to denounce it. "What can this repressive regime in Beijing possibly have in common with the Olympic ideals?" he said. "I can find no reason for the world to turn a blind eye now to Chinese human rights abuses." Russian liberals like Kovalyov claim Beijing was not the favorite because of the city's sports facilities or hotel industry. They see political and economic interests behind the vote.

So too do the folks from the New York-based Students for a Free Tibet, a group of hard-core Tibetan rights activists who made the trip to Moscow from Manhattan just for the IOC vote. Along with a handful of Russian cohorts, they staged valiant, if brief, protests around Moscow. There were some arrests, involving a Tibetan monk, two Russian representatives from Reporters Without Borders, and an outraged member of Russian Buddhist group. The Tibetan monk, Ngawang Gyaltsen, had managed to hoist a photo of the Dalai Lama only for a few minutes before being detained.

"We're already talking about a boycott of corporate sponsors," said John Hocevar, head of Students for a Free Tibet, a group that has 500 chapters in U.S. schools and colleges. "Everything we've learned from trying to communicate with the IOC has led us to believe that they were going to be moved by financial concerns, not human rights issues." Hocevar said that in recent months, his group had launched a massive campaign, with activists sending tens of thousands of postcards, letters, e-mails, and faxes to IOC members. Exiled Tibetans, he said, sent IOC members "khatas" (Tibetan scarves) to counter Beijing's claim that Tibetans in Tibet backed the bid.

New York-based Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, seconded the move to turn their attention on the corporate sponsors of the Games. "The IOC didn't even try to get guarantees on human rights," said Sidney Jones, the group's Asia Director. "If abuses take place as preparations for the Games proceed, it won't be just the Chinese authorities who will look bad -- the IOC and the corporate sponsors will be complicit."