New York Makes Its Final Pitch

Nearly four years ago, in the days that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, made a dramatic suggestion: Give the 2012 Summer Olympic Games to New York City.

“If New York is a candidate, I think all other cities should all step back to allow New York to host the 2012 Games,” he said. “If the Games go to New York, it means the athletes, the spectators, the whole world -- we can all be together. This will show that the terrorists are defeated.”

On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee will choose the site of the 2012 Games. Paris, London, Moscow and Madrid, the other finalists along with New York, did not simply step aside.

The British and French press have spent months declaring that the contest is a two-horse race, London and Paris, Paris and London. But New York bid boosters insist New York ought not to be counted out, in remarks that increasingly here and over the last several weeks have drawn on the imagery and emotion of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), speaking at a news conference early this morning, said, “We’re standing here a little less than four years from the time we were attacked, and we’re telling you New York City is the place to bring the 2012 Olympics because people in New York are resilient. They’re extraordinary in their capacity to pull together and plan their future.”

Speaking Monday here, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “We are united in ways that America and New York can only do when our backs are to the wall.

“You saw us like an athlete who fell, got back up and said, ‘OK, just a little more of a challenge,’ and ran even harder.”

Paris has long been considered the front-runner in the 2012 contest, with a plan that relies on extensive use of temporary venues, in keeping with IOC President Jacques Rogge’s call to contain the size and cost of the multibillion-dollar entity that is the Games.

A Paris 2012 Games would make emphatic an IOC commitment to downsizing and would set the direction of the Olympic movement for 2016 and beyond.

A London Games would spur development of the city’s east side, around a to-be-built Olympic Park that evokes comparisons to the layout of the successful 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. A Madrid Games would underscore the continuing influence of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain. Moscow is considered a longshot.

IOC elections are notoriously volatile; Paris bid for the 2008 Games, which went to Beijing, and didn’t receive even as many votes as Istanbul, Turkey. The IOC votes by secret ballot, and no one, not even longtime insiders, stood prepared Tuesday, only hours before the vote, to declare how it will turn.

“The winner will have to be really, really good,” Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said in an interview.

And tell a compelling story.

Last month, after the bid’s plan for a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan fell apart, New York quickly announced plans to move the Olympic stadium to a new Met ballpark in Queens. The IOC early today approved the plan to switch to a Queens stadium. Said Bloomberg: “See how quickly we recovered from a setback on the stadium. It didn’t stop us at all. We didn’t drop out. We didn’t go cry about it. We just came up with another plan, which we really are excited about.”

Referring again to the stadium turnabout, U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) recently issued a statement that said, “Just as we did following Sept. 11, New York City has once again proven that it can rise from the most challenging of situations and come through with renewed hope.”

And in a news conference Monday, Australian swimming legend Ian Thorpe, a multiple Olympic gold medalist who was in New York on 9/11, said, “I saw the resolve and the way New Yorkers were able to work together in the darkest time.” He added a moment later, “Let’s go, New York!”

The Sept. 11 attacks have consistently posed a delicate challenge for the New York bid. As the bid leader and Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said upon arrival here a few days ago, “We’re definitely not looking for anybody’s sympathy.”

At the same time, the city’s response to the attacks underscores the values New York bid officials have sought time and again to portray as the essence of the Olympic enterprise: a coming-together in a spirit of brotherhood for a common good.

Bloomberg, asked about the import of Sept. 11 in Wednesday’s vote, said, “I don’t think that 9/11 is an issue here -- other than the world knows that freedom was attacked in New York, the world knows how America responded.”

If a sense of can-do and solidarity engendered by the attacks has provided the underpinning to the New York narrative, city and U.S. bid officials also have opted to emphasize the financial upside of a New York Games even while stressing the import of personal relationships and one-on-one campaigning.

A central element in New York’s bid is a plan to provide marketing support in the seven-year run-up to 2012 for each of the 28 Summer Games sports, with the idea of generating attention and increased revenue in New York and across the U.S. market for sports as diverse as track and field, which thrives in Europe but lags in the U.S., and handball, which is virtually unknown in the U.S.

The New York plan also would generate $153 million in royalty payments to the IOC from sponsorship and ticket revenues, far more than any of the other four cities.

“These Games can give an economic boost to all members of the Olympic family,” said Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee and chief of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, which generated a $232.5-million profit and transformed Olympic economics.

Unlike, say, Paris, which heads into Wednesday’s vote with a bloc of presumed supporters from Europe and from French-speaking Africa, New York has no such ready advantage. No U.S. candidate ever does in the IOC, which has traditionally been dominated by European political interests.

That would make a New York win all the more improbable.

But rivals concede that Doctoroff has emerged as perhaps the most effective one-on-one Olympic campaigner in years and that Bloomberg, who energized New York’s candidacy with an appearance in December at an Olympic meeting in Croatia, can be mesmerizing.

Rivals and observers also say that while the turn to a stadium in Queens may yet prove problematic, New York has already overcome two other significant challenges. Early in the race, the USOC was adrift; Ueberroth’s arrival last year brought calm and purpose. In addition, a concerted U.S. government effort has smoothed over visa problems for foreign visitors that had sparked ill will in Olympic circles.

Bloomberg said IOC members “want to know whether you have the moxie that when things don’t work out exactly the ways you wanted them to ... that you can recover and change and be flexible, and that’s what New York is all about. New Yorkers are about getting things done. We’re always able to recover and change.”

From the get-go, the New York strategy has been not to focus on a bloc but on individual votes.

Think the upstart rebels in the “Star Wars” films going against the dominance of the imperial command, IOC member Bob Ctvrtlik of Newport Beach said: “It’s that sort of ragtag fleet. We have to get a vote from here, a vote from there, a vote from all over the world.”

Each voter, the New York bid theory goes, is individually motivated by something. What is it?

“What the Olympic voters will look at is what’s in the interests of the IOC, what’s in the interests of their sport, what’s in the interests of their country,” Bloomberg said.

About 100 IOC members will take part in the vote; the voting proceeds in rounds, the city receiving the least votes in each round dropping out until one of the cities seizes a majority. A member can vote for one city in a particular round, another in another and so on.

“You’ve got to come here with at least three preferences in your mind,” Australia’s R. Kevan Gosper, a longtime member and former IOC vice president, said.

And a secret vote means that, as Ueberroth put it recently, “This is the one time every single individual IOC member can ... fearlessly express themselves.”

Insiders say it’s entirely possible that New York could flame out spectacularly -- tossed in the first round, when voters opt to repay favors or make other statements. A one-round sympathy vote for Moscow, for instance, could threaten New York.

But it’s also possible, insiders said, that New York could show strength early on -- and if New York makes it out of the second round, could well prevail. Bloomberg said he is “phenomenally optimistic.”

He also said, “There’s a spirit in New York. It’s a unique time in New York’s history,” adding in yet another dimension to the 9/11 theme, “We want an opportunity to say thank you to the world for rallying to our support when we needed it.

“We’re going to continue. We’re going to win this one.”