Five Cities Put On Game Faces for Olympic Bidding

Each of them has paid the formidable price, roughly $20 million, for its 55 minutes before the International Olympic Committee today, hoping to persuade 54 of 107 voters to let them spend millions and millions more over the next seven years.

The host city of the 2004 Summer Olympics will be selected today, with five battle-fatigued finalists plugging and pitching one last time, wheeling in the heaviest promotional artillery they can muster.

Rome is offering up the Via Veneto, the famed “La Dolce Vita” corridor of luxury hotels and five-star restaurants, as a walled-off, rabble-free frolic zone for IOC members and their families during the 2004 Games.

Athens is playing on IOC guilt, after losing its rightful claim to Centennial Games to the gridlocked Coca-Cola-and-Kodak fest that was Atlanta ’96.

Stockholm is billing itself as “the athletes’ choice,” trotting out all of the big names it can coerce into Stockholm 2004 shirts--Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, Stefan Edberg, Willie Banks--and having them extol the city as a clean and safe Olympic site, no matter how many protest bombs are set off outside sporting venues there.

Buenos Aires is renowned for its professional soccer and its steakhouses and, admittedly, recognizes that these might not be enough to carry the day.

Cape Town has Nelson Mandela.

Much has been made of the Greco-Roman wrestling match for the 2004 Games--the two cradles of western civilization battling again, thousands of years after Greece invented the Olympics and Rome co-opted them with sword, spear and chariot.

And although the age-old rivals remain the favorites, Cape Town, despite insufficient facilities and no small concern about crime and security, has emerged as an intriguing wild card, almost solely on the strength of Mandela’s charisma and oratory prowess.

The South African president arrived in Lausanne on Thursday, where he met with a small gathering of American and South African reporters to discuss the Cape Town bid, offering a sort of sneak preview of the speech he will deliver before the IOC electorate today.

“The logo of the Olympics has got five rings, each ring representing a particular continent,” Mandela said. “Three continents have had the honor of hosting the Olympic Games. Two have not--Latin America and Africa.

“We consider it just and equitable that these two continents have a chance at hosting the Olympic Games. . . . To give the Games to Buenos Aires or South Africa will give real meaning to the Olympic logo.”

Mandela spoke passionately of an Olympic torch relay that would take the Olympic flame to “each and every country in Africa, [serving] to introduce every country to the world.”

That flame eventually would arrive in Cape Town, where it would burn in a caldron within sight of the Robben Island prison, where Mandela was incarcerated for 27 years before his release in 1990.

Asked to imagine such a sight, Mandela said, “I cannot tell you how I would feel because I think I will be so excited, I don’t think I’ll be able to think rationally.”

Symbolism has been tied to Cape Town’s bid from the beginning. Today’s election is being held five years after South Africa was readmitted to the Olympics following a 32-year ban because of the country’s apartheid policy. The 2004 Games will be held during the 10th anniversary year of South Africa’s first democratic election after the dismantling of a regime based on white-minority rule and racial separation.

Hosting those Games, in Mandela’s words, would provide “evidence that South Africa has moved away from its reputation as polecat of the world to a country that is welcomed by the world.”

Pragmatically, too, the Games would benefit South Africa, in Mandela’s estimation. The president spoke of the Olympics creating “20,000 temporary jobs and 90,000 permanent jobs in South Africa. It will lead to a boom in tourism, a network of transport around the Cape and the construction of 20,000 low-cost housing units.

“These are far-reaching advancements, given the history of our country.”

True, but first Mandela must convince a majority of IOC members that such a cause is worth their vote. Urban renewal is not high on the IOC priority list when it comes to awarding a billion-dollar enterprise, bearing the IOC stamp of approval, that will be held up to global scrutiny.

As Dutch IOC member Anton Geesink put it, “We’re not here to clean up someone else’s house.”

Geesink, a gold medalist in judo at the 1964 Olympics, believes the bid should go to the city where “the athletes are most comfortable, because athletes are the most important part of the Games. For me, that is the most important thing. That, and [making sure] the finances don’t hang like a stone on the people [of the host city] after the Games.”

It is a wide-open field, with only Buenos Aires considered a candidate without a chance. A closer look at the finalists, in order of their perceived chances, while trying to factor in what mileage Cape Town may derive from any presentation pyrotechnics by Mandela:

ROME, ITALY

* WHY: Blatantly and brazenly courting IOC votes with the allure of three weeks of free housing inside the Via Veneto. The Rome 2004 committee proudly handed promotional literature touting the fact that “the Olympic Family will be hosted right in the heart of the cultural and commercial part of Rome,” which will handily be “covered with a transparent structure, creating as such a single hall” that will turn accommodations in Rome into an airplane seating plan--first class cordoned off from economy. Also well schooled at this sort of thing, having hosted the 1990 World Cup and the 1987 world track and field championships.

* WHY NOT: In Wednesday’s International Herald Tribune, Jas Gawronski, a member of the Italian Senate, wrote a column headlined, “Spare Rome the 2004 Olympics,” in which Gawronski debunked several promotional claims about the city’s infrastructure, including a “23-minute travel time from Fiumicino airport to central Rome.” Wrote Gawronski, “Perhaps [race driver] Michael Schumacher would be able to accomplish such a feat, but only at night and with no traffic.”

* OUTLOOK: No longer the prohibitive favorite--Athens has closed fast--but still the safest bet on the board.

ATHENS, GREECE

* WHY: Lost the 1996 Games to Atlanta through sheer arrogance--believed the Centennial Games were a Greek birthright and the Athens bid chairman delivered his presentation speech in Greek, ignoring the official IOC languages of English and French. Taking the more palatable, humble approach this time around--focusing on, in the words of new bid chief Gianna Angelopoulos, not what the Olympics can do for Greece, but what Greece can do for the Olympics. Test run with last month’s world track and field championships was well organized.

* WHY NOT: Test run with last month’s world track and field championships was not well attended, with early-round competition played out inside a half-empty Olympic Stadium. Much blame was attributed to high ticket prices, but that problem wasn’t alleviated in the 2004 bid, which features an average ticket price equal to $40.

* OUTLOOK: Behind closed doors, on secret ballots, anything can happen, even a massive epidemic of guilt pangs that deliver the Games to Athens eight years late.

CAPE TOWN, S. AFRICA

* WHY: In several thousand words or more, Mandela will try to spell it out for the IOC. Dismissing concerns about South Africa’s political future after he leaves office in 1999, Mandela quipped Thursday, “In almost every way, I am completely retired. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki is already running the government of this country. . . . In many respects, he is head and shoulders above the current president.” Perhaps, but today there is no question as to who reigns as MVP.

* WHY NOT: The IOC Evaluation Commission report cited Cape Town for poor canoeing and rowing courses, security problems, access difficulties and a high crime rate, concluding that plans to improve safety and security “will be a challenge.” So, too, will the construction of most of the Olympic venues, which look very nice in artists’ renderings on glossy paper.

* OUTLOOK: Chris Ball, chief executive officer for the Cape Town bid, downplays the crime issue, saying, “At the Cape Town airport, you can’t find a policeman.” Today, 107 IOC voters will try to decide if this is indeed a good thing.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

* WHY: Many famous athletes, some of them possibly unpaid for their press release-ready blurbs, have lined up behind the Stockholm bid, praising the weather--a good 20 degrees cooler, on the average, than Rome and Athens in July and August--the facilities and traditional Swedish hospitality. Bid is characteristically efficient--75% of the venues are within a five-kilometer radius; 32 of the 36 Olympic facilities already exist.

* WHY NOT: Almost everyone--athletes, media, IOC officials--seems to like the idea of a Swedish Olympics, with the notable exception of the Swedes. A recent poll showed 42% of Swedes don’t want the Games in Stockholm, which provides some insight into the 10 arson fires and two facility bombings the city has endured this summer.

* OUTLOOK: Seldom do the Olympics go where the Olympics aren’t wanted.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

* WHY: Argentina is one of 12 founding members of the IOC, and the only one not to have had an Olympics. Having failed in four previous bids, Argentina believes it is long overdue. The IOC also is keen on Buenos Aires’ plan of a torch relay through all the South American countries and Antarctica.

* WHY NOT: Buenos Aires is not in Europe and its president is not named Mandela. Organizational glitches at the 1995 Pan American Games only lengthen the odds.

* OUTLOOK: If it gets out of the first round, a moral victory.