SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES 2012 BIDS LONDON, MADRID, MOSCOW, NEW YORK & PARIS

 

XXX Olympiad 27 July to 12 August 2012
XIV Paralympics 29 August to 9 September 2012

SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES 2012 BIDS

The 2012 Summer Olympics were expected to attract some 11,000 athletes plus around 10,000 Olympic "team" personnel such as coaches, track and administrative officials and hierarchy. It was anticipated that in the region of 20,000 representing all aspects of the media would also be in attendance. Around 9 million spectators were expected, although many of these were from the home country and will not require accommodation.

Olympic Games host cities are chosen by the IOC, following a lengthy process beginning some 8 or 9 years before the proposed games. Cities around the world are eligible to apply as long as they can fulfil the stringent requirements.

Hosting the prestigious Olympics can be an extremely expensive but rewarding experience and the competition for this accolade is awesome. Athletes from all disciplines dream of one day being able to represent their country on home soil.

Cities within a country must apply to their NOC (National Olympic Committee) for approval. This in itself is fiercely contested with great rivalry between competing cities. The city chosen to go forward will have demonstrated to the NOC their ability to present an application which is considered to have a good chance of success in later selection stages. Even this first stage involves a lot of expense and cities cannot even contemplate submitting an application whithout being confident that they at least stand a good chance of being chosen to host the Olympics.

Following this, a brief description of the proposed bid has to be presented to the IOC for their consideration. If a city passes this hurdle it is placed on a short list and then has to go on and prepare a full blown bid to be presented to the IOC by a certain date. The Olympic bid should demonstrate quite clearly that the candidate city will be able to hold Olympics in keeping with the general ethos of the games and provide facilities for a successful games from all aspects. Proposed or existing venues for all Olympic events have to be shown and either sites or plans available for inspection, as well as acommodation for competitors, supporting teams and others. Funding and all-round effects, short and long term, on proposed area are looked at. Transport between venues and accommodation is another consideration as are security, enthusiasm, spectator facilities and many other facets of a very extensive and prestigious international event. It is a very complex, time consuming and expensive project which requires an enormous amount of dedication from the Olympic Bid Team, usually a mixture of business people, sporting experts and athletes.

After an exhaustive examination of each city's bid and a final scrutiny by a visiting team of IOC inspectors, the members of the Olympic Committee vote for the city they consider to be the most appropriate and the winner is announced.

The 2012 Olympic host city contenders are all big players and a closely fought battle for supremacy is expected.

The original list of cities vying for the honour of becoming the 2012 Olympics Host City, included: Rio de Jainero in Brazil, Leipzig in Germany, Istanbul in Turkey and Havana, Cuba.

THE FINAL DECISION ON WHICH CITY WOULD HOST THE 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES AND PARALYMPICS WAS ANNOUNCED IN SINGAPORE ON 6 July 2005.

During May, the IOC made public their evaluations of all the candidate cities leaving a month for each city to make a final push for victory.

All cities bidding for the 2012 took advantage of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games to see how they did things and to learn first hand from their experiences. They were all invited to Athens by the organising committee and have had various meetings to discuss their findings.

Before the final vote was taken and announced, the Candidate Cities travelled to Australia, Ghana and Germany where each had the opportunity to present their bid and lobby for votes in the run up to their final presentation and chance to try and win votes in Singapore