Amsterdam Will Push for 1992 Olympics

A three-man delegation from Amsterdam was in Los Angeles Friday, touting the Dutch city as a site for the 1992 Summer Olympics.

The Dutch government is expected to give formal approval to the bid Monday, and the delegation promised a full-fledged push for approval from the International Olympic Committee a year from now.

Enneus Heerma, the city’s deputy mayor, predicted that the contest will boil down to Barcelona vs. Amsterdam, although he said Paris may emerge as a strong contender and that Brisbane, Australia, is an outside possibility. The other announced candidates are New Delhi, India; Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and Birmingham, England.

Heerma said that Barcelona, the home city of IOC President Juan Samaranch, probably has to be given the inside track, but he said Amsterdam’s advantages will become apparent before the vote is taken Oct. 17, 1986.

The Amsterdam plan calls for publicly run Games costing about $500 million. This perhaps optimistic projection includes cost of administration as well as construction of a new main stadium and an Olympic village.

The delegation said that one of the most attractive features of the Amsterdam bid is that 85% of all the events will be within five miles of each other, a sharp contrast to the Los Angeles Games. “We are calling ours ‘the compact Games,’ ” Heerma said.

He and his colleagues also emphasized that the Netherlands has a stable government and gets along reasonably well with all of the power blocs, reducing chances of a boycott.

Amsterdam, the largest city in the Netherlands, has a population of about 700,000 but there are 1.5 million in the metropolitan area. It is already a major tourist center with good communication links to the rest of Europe.