Posted: July 6, 2005

Olympics: London Upsets Paris For 2012 Games

From David Monti

© 2005 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

About one hour ago in Singapore, the International Olympic Committee named London as the sight of the 2012 Olympic Games, upsetting Paris, long touted by the mainstream media as the front runner.

Moscow, New York City and Madrid were the other three candidate cities, but were eliminated in the earlier rounds of voting (in that order), setting up the showdown between London and Paris in the fourth and final round of voting.

The French capital seemed to have at least one significant advantage over the British capital: the Stade de France. The national stadium, built for the 1998 World Cup and located in St. Denis, is a magnificent athletics and soccer stadium and is convenient to public transportation, including the RER line which stretches directly from Charles De Gaulle airport. The stadium was used for the 2003 IAAF World Championships in Athletics, and just last Friday some 70,000 fans filled the Stade to watch the opening leg of the IAAF Golden League, the Meeting Gaz de France, in support of their Olympic bid.

Surely, the defeat is being taken hard in France. Paris hosted the Olympics twice before, but not since 1924. London hosted their second Olympic Games in 1948, a relative short while ago in Olympic terms.

New York City's bid was weighted down mostly by local political issues which led to a spectacular failure to gain public and legislative support for the construction of an Olympic Stadium, proposed for Manhattan's West Side. After that plan went down in flames, the city hastily came up with a back-up plan for a stadium in Queens. I.O.C. officials were apparantly not impressed by the New York bid, eliminating it in just the second round of voting.

London's selection provides a much needed boost for Prime Minister Tony Blair, as the G-8 meetings open today at the luxury Scottish golf resort, Gleneagles.