Panel Cites ‘Quality’ of N.Y. Olympic Bid

An International Olympic Committee panel Thursday praised the “quality” of New York City’s bid for the 2012 Summer Games, in particular the “sufficient guarantees and assurances” it had received regarding the development of a stadium complex for the west side of Manhattan.

“We have been given an assurance the stadium will be there,” said Nawal el Moutawakel, of Morocco, the chairwoman of the 13-member IOC evaluation commission, which wrapped up a four-day visit.

Referring to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, she said, “He’s a winner and his team is a winning team,” and called the stadium plan a “good legacy.” But if it doesn’t come to pass, she noted, it could become a concern, adding, “We will follow closely all this ... to deliver an honest report.”

The visit was the commission’s third stop among the five cities vying for the 2012 Summer Games. It previously had been to Madrid and London, with trips to Paris and Moscow planned next month.

The IOC’s full assembly, about 115 members, will pick the 2012 winner on July 6 at a convention in Singapore. Paris is widely considered the front-runner. New York has never staged the Games.

“I’ve heard that this bid is not favored. I’ve heard all kinds of ratings of who’s going to win and lose,” said U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth, who also headed the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. “But the New York bid is alive and well and I think you’re going to be surprised by the time July comes around. It’s not an arrogant bid. It’s a humble bid.”

The commission’s turn through New York underscored the effect of reforms enacted in the wake of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, which erupted in late 1998. However, it also illuminated the limits of the reforms, since the bid will be won the way IOC elections have always been won, with an emphasis on personal politics, according to IOC insiders and experts.

“What doesn’t change, truly, is that it’s all about personal relationships,” said Evelina Christillin, a senior executive with the Turin 2006 Winter Games committee.

Referring to New York bid leader Dan Doctoroff, the city’s deputy mayor, she said: “He goes everywhere. This shows respect for the Olympic world.”

Before the scandal, IOC members were free to visit any city bidding for a Games, and the campaigns became increasingly lavish. Salt Lake’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games included more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements.

After the scandal erupted, 10 IOC members were expelled or resigned and the organization enacted a 50-point reform plan that included a ban on individual member visits to bidding cities.

In theory, the ban heightened the importance of the evaluation commission, which assesses the so-called “technical” merits of a city, including transportation, budgets and security.

The 13 members of the commission tour the various venues and are subjected to hours of briefings. In New York, the briefings were staged at the Plaza Hotel, across from Central Park.

London 2012 organizers spent about $1 million for last week’s evaluation commission visit. New York 2012 spent $3 million. The IOC picks up the panelists’ expenses.

The London bid organizers have a budget of about $53.5 million, two-thirds of it provided by the central and municipal government. New York’s operating budget for the bid process runs to $22.5 million, all of it privately funded.

The visits also afford each city the chance to put forward, under tight IOC control, a dash of cultural glitz.

In London, the committee dined with the queen at Buckingham Palace. In New York, it was treated to a star-studded show Wednesday night at which Whoopi Goldberg quipped about the city, “We have Asian people making pizza. We have Italian people serving soul food. You don’t see that truly anywhere else. We are the world. We truly are.”

About a month before the July 6 vote, the commission will release a report on each city’s technical capabilities, but it will not rank the cities.

New York’s technical challenge is to complete the planning for the west-side stadium by July 6 -- as Bloomberg, New York Gov. George Pataki and others this week said repeatedly would happen. After the 2012 Games, the NFL’s New York Jets would call the stadium home.

The $1.6-billion project has drawn heated political opposition in New York. Within the IOC, the mood is more sanguine.

Beijing had to build a stadium for the 2008 Games. So did Sydney for the 2000 Games and Atlanta for 1996. Athens built a stadium roof for last summer’s Olympics.

“When you have those types of people saying it’s going to get done, it’s generally going to get done,” an influential European IOC member, referring to Bloomberg and Pataki, said on condition of anonymity.

Bid officials also stressed the $492 million in financial guarantees they stand ready to offer for various liabilities. El Moutawakel called that “important.”

The forthcoming report might not mean much, even if it signals that one city offers better technical capabilities, because few IOC members are expected to read it.

In the contest for the 2008 Summer Games, for example, Toronto presented a bid that drew technical raves, but Beijing won. In the contest for the 2006 Winter Games, the Swiss town of Sion emerged as technically superior, yet Turin won.

“Many members will read only the conclusion, if they read the report at all,” said Jean-Loup Chappelet, a professor at the graduate school of public administration at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and technical director of Sion’s unsuccessful 2006 and 2002 bids.

The evaluation commission road show is not, however, without value, he and others said.

It offers evidence that the IOC, long derided as the province of fusty royals and elderly sports cronies, is now being run more like a business, in line with the approach undertaken by Jacques Rogge, the Belgian surgeon elected IOC president in 2001.

The process also offers proof of the ongoing power and symbolism of the Olympics, as Rogge signals his intent to take the movement to the developing world.

Of the 13 on the 2012 evaluation panel, six are IOC members, including four from Africa, which has never staged the Games -- Frankie Fredericks of Namibia, Mustapha Larfaoui of Algeria, Sam Ramsamy of South Africa and El Moutawakel.

“There is no other international institution that could possibly give a Muslim woman power over five of the world’s greatest cities, but the Olympic movement did, and that’s a tribute, I believe, to its symbolic might and transforming power,” said George Hirthler, an Atlanta-based Olympic expert who has served as a consultant to bids as varied as New York, Beijing and the 2010 Winter Games site, Vancouver.

Skeptics may scoff, but as the 2012 bid season turns from technical to political, every vote counts.

“This is not a complicated process,” Doctoroff said. “We have to win 50.1% of the vote.

“What we have to do is convey the power of our plan, the strengths of New York City, our ability to be great partners. And we have to do that in as much an individual basis as we possibly can.”