TORONTO, 4:34 p.m. EDT July 9, 2001 -- Will it be to the starting line or to the shower room?
Toronto eagerly awaits the International Olympic Committee's decision this week in Moscow on who will host the 2008 Summer Games. The city finds out Friday whether it has outbid Beijing, Paris, Osaka and Istanbul to host the next Olympics. "We're confident going into Moscow," said Karen Pitre, executive vice-president of Toronto 2008. "We know we have an excellent bid and a great, multi-cultural city, but we also know that it is a race and anything can happen." About 200 Toronto bid delegates will be in Moscow, including bid staff, athletes, politicians and sponsors. Back at home, remaining bid committee members will host a street party at Union Station, starting at 7 a.m. This is the moment supporters have been working toward since 1995, when local groups first met to discuss the possibility of bidding on the 2008 Games. Three years later, the Canadian Olympic Association in Calgary accepted their letter of intent, and the planning process started to roll. The city officially threw its support behind the bid in February 2000, and the provincial and federal governments were quick to follow. In October, they jointly announced $1.5 billion to revitalize the city's waterfront where the Olympic Park would be located. That was a relief for organizers, who, without the support of all three levels of government years earlier, failed in their bid for the 1996 Games. "For too long the potential of the Toronto waterfront has been an untapped resource," Ontario Premier Mike Harris said in a release at the time of the funding announcement. "But that is about to change. Soon it will become the kind of place that everyone can enjoy with their friends and families." "Moving forward together on the revitalization of the Toronto waterfront is such a crucial element of Toronto's plan to stage the greatest Games in the history of the Olympic movement," Prime Minister Jean Chretien said in a release. The plan calls for the use of 25 sports venues within half a kilometer of the Olympic Village, which would house all the athletes who compete in the Games. More than 100 training facilities would be located within 30 minutes of the Village. In May, the IOC released its report on the bid submissions, ranking Toronto, Beijing and Paris as excellent contenders to host the Games. The report lauded Toronto's plan, saying its "compact sports concept based on a unique site adjacent to the city centre with good transport links and a legacy to sport make the bid very attractive. "The major challenge is the capacity of the combined private sector and government alliance to deliver the waterfront sports venues and Village developments. "However, the Commission is confident that this could be achieved and that Toronto would stage an excellent Games.'' "I'm excited,'' said Toronto bid leader John Bitove at a news conference. "It is a great boost of energy as we get focused on Moscow. It is a culmination of a lot of hard work.'' While the city received ringing endorsements from the IOC in its report on the technical merits of the bid, the bid process itself has not always gone smoothly. Last summer, a Northern Ontario group threatened to execute a campaign against Toronto's bid over the city's plan to export garbage to the Adams Mine. Residents of Kirkland Lake, Ont., wrote letters of protest to the International Olympic Committee. Anti-poverty groups like Bread Not Circuses also tried to kill the city's bid by protesting and showing videos of homeless people to the IOC when it visited Toronto in March. And most recently, African-Canadian groups demanded Mayor Mel Lastman resign after he made disparaging remarks prior to visiting Mombasa, Kenya, to promote Toronto's Olympic bid. Lastman told a newspaper reporter he didn't want to go where the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa was meeting because he and his wife, Marilyn, feared snakes. "What the hell would I want to go to a place like Mombasa," he said, later adding, "I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me." Critics have said the mayor's comments could cost Toronto its chance at hosting the Games. However, competing cities Beijing and Paris have also suffered their share of criticism. The IOC has been flooded with letters of protest over Beijing's human rights record. They cite, among other things, the crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, the arrest of Chinese-American scholars, repression in Tibet and mass executions of prisoners. And in Paris, Claude Bebear, the bid chief, is being investigated in a money-laundering scheme for his role as chief executive of the French insurance group Axa. Politics will play a large role in Moscow this week as the IOC makes its final decision. Friday morning, the secret ballot will begin with each member casting a vote. If a majority vote is not acquired in the first round, the city with the least votes will be removed from the ballot and the members will vote again. In the event of a tie, the bid chairman decides. Toronto bid official Bob Richardson says he hopes history will repeat itself and the bid winner will not be the city predicted to win -- in this case, Beijing. "We are feeling fairly bullish about things. We believe we are the bid of certainty, a risk-free bid.''
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