Olympic Bidding Bitter to End

Only three more back-stabbing, mud-slinging, name-calling, glad-handing, finger-pointing days until the International Olympic Committee names the host city for the 2004 Summer Games, mercifully ending the most bitter, widest-open race to win an Olympic bid in years.

The 106th IOC session begins today, with the committee’s election of the 2004 Olympic host set for Friday. This is seen as a good thing for front-runners Rome and Athens, whose bid committees might have imploded if the campaign lasted any longer, and Stockholm, weary from arranging weekly news conferences to address that city’s latest bomb detonation or terrorist threat allegedly linked to the 2004 bid.

Cape Town and Buenos Aires, the other finalists, could no doubt use more time in their attempts to convince the IOC that Africa and South America are finally Olympic-ready, but not as much as the IOC is likely to give them with Friday’s vote.

Come back, say, when the 2008 or 2012 Games are awarded.

A European city is expected to get the 2004 Games, but which one is, at best, an educated guess, now that Rome has frittered away a once-commanding lead.

Rome’s bid has risen and swooned with the words and actions of its bellicose point man, Primo Nebiolo. As president of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, international track and field’s governing body, Nebiolo has been a powerful lobbyist on Rome’s behalf--and a detrimental irritant who could turn once-neutral IOC votes into sympathetic support for Athens or Stockholm.

Nebiolo stirred the caldron at last month’s World Track Championships in Athens. The track meet, viewed by Athens as an audition for the 2004 Games, was well organized and generally well received, but Nebiolo repeatedly took shots at Rome’s chief Olympic rival--in particular, chiding Athens organizers for small crowds early in the meet.

Nebiolo rankled Athenians by braying at them to “get off the beach” and get out to the meet. He also suggested that organizers advertise the event by driving through the streets with a mobile public-address system, selling track tickets “the way we sell watermelons.”

When a bomb exploded outside Stockholm’s 1912 Olympic Stadium on Aug. 8, Nebiolo issued a statement to the international media at the Athens meet expressing sympathy for the Stockholm bid committee.

Dubious of Nebiolo’s intentions, Olaf Stenhammar, head of the Stockholm bid committee, said, “Sympathy is all right, but if the sympathy is a way to link these deeds to the bid, then we don’t want to have any sympathy. That’s just an effort to disturb [our] bid.”

Since then, Nebiolo has been besieged with problems of his own.

Eisa Al-Dashti, an IAAF official from Kuwait, demanded Nebiolo’s resignation as IAAF president unless he apologized for his “aggressive and rude” behavior toward Athens.

Al-Dashti made his demand Friday, during the gaffe-ridden World University Games in Sicily, which have raised doubts about Italy’s ability to put on efficient Olympic Games.

Athens’ bid is built around the promise of public works--including a new airport and metro system--designed to ease Olympic transportation congestion. But last week, a group calling itself the Citizens Initiative Against Hosting the 2004 Olympics in Athens, threatened to fight those projects in court if Athens won the bid.

Athens also became the second city to see its bid tarnished by a terrorist attack when a small leftist group claimed responsibility Monday for a firebomb attack that damaged the entrance to the Greek Olympic Committee. No one was injured in the blast.

Stockholm, once a popular compromise candidate, had its bid all but quashed by the Olympic Stadium bombing, plus threats of additional violence from a self-described anti-Olympic “protest group.”