New York to Play Key Role in 2012

Vancouver is in; Toronto is out. For New York, that’s a plus.

The election Wednesday of Vancouver as host of the 2010 Winter Games lifts the curtain on the 2012 Summer Olympics race.

The list of 2012 applicants includes New York, Paris, London, Moscow and Madrid. Also in the race: Istanbul, Havana and Leipzig, Germany. Later this month, either Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo, Brazil, will enter the fray.

One Olympic expert, George Hirthler, a consultant to the Vancouver campaign, calls that race, which will be decided in 2005, the “heavyweight championship of Olympic bids.”

The pivotal player figures to be New York -- pro or con. The key dynamic: The contest for influence between European political leverage within the IOC against both the economic clout of U.S.-based corporations, which significantly underwrite the Olympic movement’s finances, and the power of the incomparable New York story.

NBC, for instance, is paying $3.5 billion to televise the Games in the United States from 2000 through 2008, and another $2.001 billion for the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Games.

Moreover, the U.S. Olympic Committee, which for 20 years has enjoyed the added revenue that a domestic Games affords, needs the Games back in the United States as soon as possible. The Games were held in Salt Lake City in 2002, Atlanta in 1996, Los Angeles in 1984 and Lake Placid in 1980. The USOC is now roughly a $120-million per-year operation.

“It’s a great opportunity for us,” Greg Harney, a longtime USOC staffer now overseeing international relations, said after Wednesday’s vote.

Toronto had been the 2008 Games runner-up, behind Beijing. It also ran for the 1996 Games, losing to Atlanta. The 2008 Toronto bid, IOC member Thomas Bach of Germany said Wednesday, was “very, very strong,” adding, “So already this affects the race for 2012.”

By electing Vancouver, a widespread belief here goes, the European members of the IOC sought to weaken New York; nearly half of its members are European, 58 of 124. All things being equal, recent history shows that the IOC prefers to rotate the Summer Games around continents.

After taking the Games to the United States in 1996, the IOC went to Australia in 2000 (Sydney), and will go to Europe in 2004 (Athens) and Asia in 2008 (Beijing).

After the vote Wednesday, however, IOC President Jacques Rogge discounted the notion of rotation around the continents. Observing that the 2004 and 2006 Games will both be in Europe (Athens and then Turin, Italy), he said, “This so-called continental rotation, we don’t believe in that.”

In 1992, under the traditional practice of holding the Winter and Summer Games in one year, both Winter and Summer went to Europe -- Winter in Albertville, France, then Summer in Barcelona. The next Games, Winter, in 1994, were again in Europe -- in Lillehammer, Norway. Then came Atlanta.

Bach said, “Some may say that by the choice of a North American city, Europe has a good argument for 2012. But geopolitical reasons are not the only [factors] in a vote. It may affect [an election], but it’s not the only factor.”

Bob Ctvrtlik, an IOC member from Newport Beach, said just minutes after the Vancouver victory was announced, “Yes, it’s possible it might be a little bit more difficult -- but I’m not at all in the camp that says this is a fatal blow to New York.”

New York officials have asserted repeatedly that it didn’t matter to them who won the 2010 Games.

“The strategy essentially remains the same,” Dan Doctoroff, deputy New York mayor and head of the bid, said. “That said, we’ve got a lot of work to do. A lot of refinement. A lot of listening to do.”

Mitt Romney, the head of the Salt Lake Winter Games who is now governor of Massachusetts, appearing here Wednesday to make the final 2002 Games report to the IOC, had long been of the opinion that a U.S. candidate had little chance in 2012.

But he said Wednesday that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “changes the formula, particularly as it relates to New York.” He said New York has a “legitimate prospect of being selected.... 9/11, I think, offers a reason for remembering and showing solidarity with those who lost their lives and therefore may open some IOC members to return to the United States before our otherwise fair date,” which he calculated at a “couple decades.”

The New York bid must also contend with lingering fallout from the Salt Lake City corruption scandal. The two top officials of the bid, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, are due to go on trial this fall on felony charges connected to the scandal, which surfaced in late 1998 amid disclosures that Salt Lake had won the Games after wooing IOC members with more than $1 million in cash and other inducements.