Athletes Get Top Billing

This much is not in dispute: Toronto is eminently capable of staging the Olympic Games.

It is a multicultural city. It has great restaurants. It’s easy to get around.

And it has put forth a development plan for the 2008 Summer Olympics that has drawn acclaim, most importantly from an International Olympic Committee evaluation commission.

But whether Toronto wins the right to play host to the 2008 Summer Games when the IOC votes July 13 ultimately may have less to do with Toronto and more to do with Beijing--as even Toronto officials concede.

“This vote is a classic issue between a political decision and what’s right for the athletes,” said John Bitove, the Toronto 2008 bid chief who used to own the Toronto Raptors of the NBA.

But if the IOC wants “to make a loud and clear statement about the Games being in the best interests of the athletes, then our plans are tailor-made.”

The centerpiece of the Toronto bid is a four-mile long development along the Lake Ontario waterfront that would feature 17 venues for 25 sports as well as the Olympic Village. The IOC’s evaluation report noted that 85% of the Olympic athletes would be competing at those 17 venues--all within 10 minutes of the village.

“That’s not by accident,” said Bitove, who like other Toronto 2008 executives showed up last month at the release of the evaluation report wearing red-and-white stickers, in English and French, that read, “Athletes First!”

“The athletes told us if you want to make this an athletes’ Games, this is all about travel time between the venues and the village and about having state-of-the-art venues to compete in,” he said.

Toronto executives are counting on support from newly elected athlete members of the IOC--about a dozen--to push their bid. “This is going to be a very close race. All the members keep telling me we have the momentum.”

Toronto also has the advantage of being in the Eastern time zone. Some observers have suggested that would be a boon to NBC, which owns the U.S. television rights to the Games through 2008. A flurry of behind-the-scenes reports circulated last week took it a step further, purporting to have NBC throwing its support behind Toronto.

The $3.5-billion deal that got NBC its TV rights, however, mandates that the network remain neutral in the process of selecting an Olympic city. And while NBC might prefer Toronto’s time zone to China’s, it’s all but impossible while in Beijing’s city center not to notice the tall off-white building with the red logo on top. That would be the one that says, “GE,” NBC’s parent company, General Electric, which already has considerable business interests in China.

NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol said it is “clearly preposterous” to suggest NBC is involved in the 2008 election. He said, “We’ve been neutral in this selection process consistently in the past and we’re absolutely neutral in this process right now.”

Aside from Beijing, Toronto’s primary obstacle is Canada’s Olympic history.

The 1988 Winter Games in Calgary went well, but offered visitors no sense of a winter wonderland.

The 1976 Summer Games in Montreal sustained a $981-million deficit and were boycotted by 27 African nations. The evaluation commission said it was “uneasy” about the Toronto 2008 budget and said “potential pressures” exist on the revenue and expense sides.

Nonetheless, it concluded the budget is “achievable” and noted that the provincial Ontario government has guaranteed to underwrite “any operational shortfall” and, if need be, to undertake construction of the Village.

If that assuaged any IOC concerns, a new one popped up.

Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman had to issue an apology for comments he made before heading in mid-June to Mombasa, Kenya, to lobby IOC members.

He had said: “What the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombasa? Snakes just scare the hell out of me. I’m sort of scared about going there, but the wife is really nervous. I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.”

It is believed Lastman was simply trying to be funny, but not everyone laughed.

“He condemned himself by making those remarks,” said Los Angeles’ Anita DeFrantz, an African American and the senior U.S. member of the IOC.

“People are phoning up and saying, ‘Did you see what [he] said?’ ” said another IOC member, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bitove said: “It was a mistake. He admitted it. We’ve got to move on.”