2008 Games Are Beijing’s to Lose

The International Olympic Committee will select the site of the 2008 Summer Games today, and because any IOC election campaign is fat with rumor and disinformation, nothing can be overlooked.

For instance, the delegates’ hot spot for dinner here has been a Chinese restaurant in an upscale hotel. Most of the IOC’s most influential and powerful members have been seen there, chopsticks in hand.

Coincidence? Or indicator of things to come?

Beijing is the heavy favorite, ahead of Paris, Toronto, Osaka, Japan, and Istanbul, Turkey.

Barring a last-minute blunder by the Chinese, according to several IOC members, Beijing will win in what would prove to be a watershed moment for China and the Olympic movement.

“If they remain calm, they’re fine,” one IOC member said.

The vote will be the first for the Summer Games since the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, which had dominated IOC business since erupting in late 1998 until the successful Sydney Games last year. As part of a 50-point reform package enacted in the wake of the scandal, IOC members were barred from bid-related visits to any of the bidding 2008 cities.

Beijing, which lost out to Sydney, has long been the leader in the 2008 campaign. An IOC evaluation report issued in May proclaimed that the Games would leave “a unique legacy to China and to sport.”

Said Wang Wei, secretary general of the bid: “If we win, we’re going to do great things with these Games.”

The Chinese bid calls for the spending of $14.3 billion in capital infrastructure improvements by 2008, much of it in highway and subway construction.

After the voting in 1993, when Beijing lost to Sydney by two votes, it was disclosed that the night before the vote, the president of the Australian Olympic Committee had offered $35,000 in aid to IOC delegates from Kenya and Uganda, contingent on a Sydney victory.

The IOC has a recent history of guilt-motivated payback in bid-city elections. Athens lost to Atlanta for the 1996 Games, then won for 2004. Salt Lake City lost to Nagano for the 1998 Winter Games, then won for 2002. Rome lost to Athens for the 2004 Summer Games, then Turin, Italy, won the 2006 Winter Games.

Many IOC members have expressed desires to go to China, home of one-fifth of the world’s people, as a way of furthering the IOC’s avowed mission of “universality.”

Beijing would also represent a significant opportunity for the IOC’s top sponsors to extend their interests in a market of 1.3 billion people.

China has never played host to the Summer Games, which have been held in Asia only twice, in Tokyo in 1964 and Seoul in 1988.

Before the vote, each of the five cities will make a 45-minute presentation, then the IOC members get 15 minutes to ask questions. The Chinese presentation includes a short promotional film made by acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, in collaboration with Bud Greenspan, the famed U.S. director of many memorable Olympic-themed films.

The most frequent objection to Beijing’s selection is China’s human-rights record. Paris and Toronto have tried the finesse approach--hoping to focus members on the issue without coming on too strong for fear of alienating delegates.

“We’re convinced that if the IOC delegates are voting for sport, for athletes, for the principles the Olympic movement stands for, they’re voting for Toronto,” said Mike Harris, the premier of Ontario, Toronto’s province.

Jean-Paul Huchol, a French statesman, said Thursday at a news conference of the human-rights issue, “This question cannot be out of the minds of those who have to take the decision.”

Osaka and Istanbul are seen as weak candidates, but it is not out of the question that either Toronto or Paris would prevail. The IOC also has a history of being rude to favorites.

Athens was the favorite for the 1996 Games; Atlanta won. Rome was supposed to win the 2004 Games; Athens did. Beijing was supposed to win the 2000 Games; Sydney did.

The centerpiece of the Toronto bid is a four-mile development along the Lake Ontario waterfront that would feature 17 venues for 25 sports, as well as the Olympic village.

“Everyone loves our plans, and everyone thinks it’s a strong bid,” said John Bitove, head of Toronto 2008.

Key IOC members said they aren’t so sure. Many remain angry at comments made recently by Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman, who said before a recent trip to Africa that he was scared of going there because he saw himself “in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.”

Said one IOC member, “That’s the sort of thing that goes boom in the final days.”

The Paris bid boasts the charms of one of the world’s favorite cities: beach volleyball at the Eiffel Tower, the marathon down the Champs Elysees.

Paris, though, has two main problems.

French authorities have been increasingly aggressive in their anti-doping stance since a drug scandal stained the 1998 Tour de France cycling event, and many IOC members are uneasy about coordinating IOC authority over the Games with French drug laws.

In addition, the 2004 Games will be in Europe, in Athens. The 2006 Winter Games will be in Europe, in Turin. Again to Europe in 2008? Particularly when London and Madrid want to bid for 2012?

“It’s an election,” said Claude Bebear, the head of the Paris bid. “You never know how people will vote. You never know what they will do and say when they push the button.”