USOC Narrows Field to Two

CHICAGO —  New York and San Francisco were chosen Tuesday as the two U.S. candidates remaining in contention as host city for the 2012 Summer Olympics, a U.S. Olympic Committee task force dismissing Washington and Houston in what was diplomatically termed a close vote but reflected a common-sense view of political and cultural realities.

The USOC’s 123-member board of directors will choose between New York and San Francisco on Nov. 3. That city will then be the sole U.S. candidate for the 2012 Games, the next possibility for the Olympics to return to the United States. The 2004 Summer Games will be in Athens, the 2008 Games in Beijing. In between, the 2006 Winter Games will be staged in Turin, Italy.

The United States has played host to eight Games, four in the last 22 years, including the Winter Games last February in Salt Lake City. Those 2002 Winter Olympics were a resounding success but the odds of the European-dominated International Olympic Committee returning to the United States in 2012 are long. The IOC will pick the 2012 site in 2005. Paris, Rome, Moscow and a dozen other cities around the world have expressed interest.

The odds of another California Olympics--despite vivid memories within the IOC of the spectacular 1984 Games in Los Angeles--are even longer, Olympic insiders have said. San Francisco Games would be the fourth in Olympic history in California. The 1932 Summer Games were in Los Angeles and the 1960 Winter Games were held in Squaw Valley.

The IOC is due to pick the site of the 2010 Winter Games next year, and Vancouver is widely believed to be the front-runner--a choice that would make returning to the West Coast just two years later problematic. The IOC prefers a geographical rotation in awarding the Games.

It is due today at a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, to trim the list of eight cities that have applied for the 2010 Winter Games. Vancouver’s primary rival is likely to be Salzburg, Austria.

Exulted upon still being in the race, Anne Cribbs, the chief executive officer of the San Francisco 2012 bid committee, expressed confidence Tuesday.

“The challenge ahead is to communicate to the USOC board of directors why San Francisco is their best choice,” she said. “It’s pretty simple. And pretty hard.”

The Games have never been held in New York City. It has for months been the city generating the most interest within the IOC.

“We think New York represents everything great about America,” New York bid chief Dan Doctoroff said.

Whether New York or San Francisco, it will take extraordinary salesmanship for the U.S. candidate to win--as a series of incidents this past week underscored. Though dollars from U.S. corporations underwrite the Olympic movement’s finances, political clout is elsewhere, in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

In voting over the weekend, for instance, Rio de Janeiro was awarded the 2007 Pan-Am Games over San Antonio. On Monday, Sergei Bubka of Ukraine, the former world champion in the pole vault, was picked as the new chairman of the IOC’s athletes’ commission, defeating Bob Ctvrtlik of Newport Beach, the former volleyball star.

Today in Lausanne, the IOC’s ruling executive board will hear an internal report that recommends that softball, among other sports, be dropped from the Olympic program. Headquarters of the world softball federation are in Florida.

Don Porter, who heads the softball federation, said that dropping softball would not only be a blow against female participation in the Games--Olympic softball is for women only--but “another example of U.S. bashing.”

Last October, the USOC trimmed a list of eight applicants to four, cutting Los Angeles and three others.

This summer, the task force toured New York, San Francisco, Washington and Houston, grading each.

Ultimately, the selection of New York and San Francisco in a meeting at the O’Hare Hilton, turned, as task force Chairman Charles H. Moore had predicted it would, on “international strategic appeal.” Moore said the choice of those two cities was “not unanimous” but reflected a “clear consensus.”

Houston was seen to lack international identity, and too often--to the complaints of Houston officials--was compared with Atlanta. In the IOC, the 1996 Games are recalled mostly for technology and transportation problems and a murderous bomb explosion at a downtown Atlanta park.

Washington’s bid revolved around a renovated waterfront and a central Olympic park in the area around RFK Stadium.

Washington, however, projects American imperialism and power to many within the IOC. And many delegates retain sharp memories of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch being summoned to testify before Congress in the midst of the Salt Lake corruption scandal.

San Francisco, meantime, with plans for venues spread around the Bay Area, made the cut only after California Gov. Gray Davis put in a recent telephone call that assured the USOC the state would assume financial responsibility--up to $250 million--should San Francisco win the Games and the organizing committee suffer a fiscal shortfall.

That prospect seems highly unlikely, since the San Francisco plan projects a budget surplus of roughly $400 million and, as well, calls for a $250-million private investment fund.Nonetheless, without the governor’s call, the San Francisco bid would have been dead. Davis could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

New York’s bid calls for construction of an Olympic stadium on the city’s West Side and of an Olympic village across town, near UN headquarters.

Last September’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Moore said, played no role in Tuesday’s decision.

Immediately after the attacks, the mayor of Rome suggested that, should New York emerge as the U.S. candidate for 2012, all other contenders ought to drop out, as a message of solidarity. IOC President Jacques Rogge called the suggestion premature.

Doctoroff also sought to play down the uncertain impact of the attacks on the bid process. But he said, “Obviously we’re very optimistic.”