London 2012!

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The BBC site was down for about 30min after the announcement because of excess traffic! But here it is!

Story from BBC SPORT:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/sport1/hi/front_page/4655555.stm

The 2012 Olympic Games will be held in London, the International Olympic Committee announced on Wednesday.

London won a two-way battle against Paris at the IOC vote in Singapore, after bids from Moscow, New York and Madrid were eliminated.

Paris had been favourites throughout the campaign but London’s hopes were raised after an impressive presentation by Lord Coe, the bid chairman.

IOC president Jacques Rogge made the dramatic announcement at 1249 BST.

It will be the first time the Olympics has been held in Britain since 1948.

Tension had filled the air as crowds gathered in both capital cities to await the verdict - outside the Hotel de Ville in Paris, and at a pre-planned ‘party’ in Trafalgar Square respectively.

The dramatic news delighted flag-waving London supporters, but raindrops began falling in the French capital shortly after the result.

This is how the decision was made by the IOC in Singapore on Wednesday:

* All five bidding cities gave final 45-minute presentations to the IOC members before the vote began.

* The electronic ballot started at 1126 BST. Moscow, New York and Madrid were eliminated from the race in the first, second and third rounds of voting.

* The final round of voting finished at about 1145 BST, with the committee reconvening at 1230 BST for the official announcement.

* IOC president Jacques Rogge revealed the winner after a nerve-wracking wait at 1249 BST.

Wednesday’s decision brings to an end the 18-month race to win the host contract for the 2012 Games.

And it was the most keenly-fought bidding contest in recent years.

Paris was considered the front-runner for much of the campaign, and was highly rated in the initial evaluation and also by the inspectors after their visits earlier in the year.

But it was widely recognised that bid leader Lord Coe, a high-profile personality within the IOC and other governing bodies, hauled London closer to the French capital as the vote approached.

Madrid was seen as a consistent but not outstanding candidate, while New York’s bid was dogged by problems over their proposed stadium, and Moscow was always seen as the rank outsider.

Once attention moved to Singapore, the bidding cities called on political and sporting heavyweights to champion their causes.

And the spotlight inevitably focused on Paris and London in the days leading up to the vote.

The two cities had President Chirac and Prime Minister Blair respectively in their corners.

Mr Chirac actually took part in the French capital’s final presentation on Wednesday, while Mr Blair opted to lobby alongside the London bid team in Singapore before flying back to Britain to host the G8 summit.

London also called on England captain David Beckham and a galaxy of Olympic and Paralympic medallists as ambassadors, while footballers Laurent Blanc and Zinedine Zidane were among those backing the Paris bid.

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So now the UK needs to switch its attention to doing something in the next 7 years so its athletes can actually win some medals!!!

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London 54 votes, Paris 50.
Good luck London!

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MJ will have a bloody field day!!!

good luck London!

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This is surely Seb Coe’s greatest victory. And perhaps his most unexpected (although that European Championship 800m win in 1986 in Stuttgart was also a marvellous surprise)

It is interesting that the reports to date have made much of Coe’s personal contribution/influence. When he speaks to you, he certainly makes you feel as though you are the only person in the world who matters to him at that moment. Perhaps that did woo the IOC reps, but I would think London’s win must have been based more in the detail of it’s offers of assistance to other nations and perhaps in it’s contribution to the Olympic movement, having renewed the Games in 1948 so soon after being blitzed during WWII. I wonder also though what did Paris did wrong. When the bids are so close, usually it is a case of one bid team “losing” the contest rather than the other “winning”.

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AS REPORTED ON THE IAAF WEBSITE
London awarded 2012 Games
Wednesday 6 July 2005
Singapore - London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games on Wednesday after the most bitterly fought bid battle in Olympic history.

The London team overhauled long-time favourites Paris as well as Madrid, Moscow and New York to win the race to stage the lucrative sports extravaganza.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge announced the winner at a globally televised ceremony after a day of presentations and deliberations at the IOC session in Singapore’s Raffles City complex.

Four votes were enough to give London a dramatic victory over Paris over the right to host the 2012 Olympics. The final count was 54-50 for Paris.

London’s victory was assured when Madrid were knocked out in the third round of voting.

The majority of the Spanish backers switched to London, pushing them over the line.

Moscow were the first to go, followed by New York, setting up a Paris-London showdown.

London led from the beginning, collecting 22 first round votes followed by Paris (21), Madrid (20), New York (19) and Moscow (15).

In the second round Madrid moved in front with 32 votes, trailed by London (27), Paris (25), New York (16).

But Madrid’s Olympic hopes were short-lived as they crashed out in the third round as London went back ahead collecting the support of 39 IOC members. Madrid slipped back to 31 and Paris increased to 33.

Agencies

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I believe that Paris was too kind. They wanted to follow Rogge’s recommendation to not criticize other’s campaign, so when London attacked the Stade De France (2003 WC stadium), Paris didn’t replied, while they had the argument that 2003 WC were a success while London withdrew the WC they were supposed to organise.
Paris said that London was too aggressive, but Paris was too kind, too lovely, etc…
Also, they lacked the leadership of a high profile sportmen like Seb Coe. Paris loves the Games, but London loves the Sport, that made the difference.

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THE AFP REPORT

London lands 2012 Games

July 6, 2005

LONDON won the right to host the 2012 Olympics in a vote by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) today pipping arch-rivals Paris in a dramatic finale.

The announcement was made by IOC chief Jacques Rogge.

The British capital will become the first city to stage the Olympics for a third time after holding them in 1908 and 1948.

Paris has now failed with three successive bids for the Games of 1992, 2008 and 2012.

Moscow was the first to fall in the opening round of voting by around 100 IOC members, followed by New York and Madrid in the second and third rounds.

That left the two favourites, Paris and London, to battle it out for the supreme spoils in sports and London won the day.

Beijing hosts the next Games in 2008.

London will become the first city to stage the Olympics for a third time after overhauling long-standing favourites Paris in the home stretch.

Nine cities, making multi-million dollar bids, started the race for the 2012 Games 19 months ago.

It was the biggest field of Olympic candidates after the 1997 vote for the 2004 Games when 10 cities went into the ring against eventual winners Athens.

Rio de Janeiro, Leipzig, Havana and Istanbul were the first to be eliminated last year.

Istanbul had been making its fourth consecutive bid while Rio had been hoping to become the first South American city to stage the Games.

Paris, which hosted the Games in 1900 and 1924, had been the front-runner from the start. The IOC has never rejected three consecutive bids from a considered front-runner.

Athens, humiliated by Atlanta when it tried to win the right to stage the 1996 centenary Games, finally won approval in 1997 for the 2004 Games when it beat off a strong bid from Rome.

London, well behind in the IOC’s early reports, and embarrassed by having to withdraw an enticement to the 10,500 athletes and team officials of free flights to London, free phone calls and free British train travel, made up ground quickly in the last few months.

New York’s bid appeared doomed when they failed to win approval for a $US2 billion ($A2.7 billion) Olympic stadium on Manhattan’s West Side.

But within days bid leader Dan Doctoroff announced a deal had been struck with the New York Mets baseball team to have the stadium built in Queens.

But the 2012 Games were always thought to have a stronger chance of being awarded to Europe than North America as the 2010 Winter Olympics will be staged in Vancouver, Canada.

London was finally persuaded to mount a challenge after Birmingham (twice) and Manchester had failed in bids for previous Games.

It was the city’s first bid. In 1908 and 1948 London stepped in to hold the Games at the request of the International Olympic Committee.

AFP

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Mal chance PJ, but it’s just across the ditch from you so , if you can stomach the beef Wellington (sorry! :wink: ), hopefully you and your sprinters will win some medals in Londre 2012. I hope so anyway. :slight_smile: kk

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My fastest sprinter was supporting London, so we were sure that someone would be happy today :smiley:

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HOW LONDON’S THE GUARDIAN REPORTED IT AN HOUR AFTER THE IOC ANNOUNCEMENT.

London today won the race to host the 2012 Olympic Games, beating the long-term favourites, Paris, at the finish line to secure one of sport’s greatest prizes.
Watched by a television audience of billions, the result was announced by the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, in Singapore.

Mr Rogge opened the envelope containing the name of the winning bid at around 1248 BST and told the hushed ballroom of the Raffles city complex: “The IOC has the honour of announcing the Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of London.”

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The result sparked jubilation in London’s Trafalgar Square where supporters of the bid had gathered. In contrast, the crowds gathered at the city hall in a drizzly Paris reacted with dismay at the city’s failure to win the games after bidding three times in the last 20 years.
Speaking at Gleneagles ahead of the G8 summit, the prime minister, Tony Blair, said he had been too nervous to watch the final stages of voting but had punched the air and “did a jig” when he heard the result. He called it a “momentous day” for London.

“I couldn’t bear to watch [the final announcement]. It is not often in this job that you get to punch the air and do a little jig and embrace the person standing next to you,” the prime minister said.

The UK capital beat Paris by 54 votes to 50 in the fourth round of voting after a secret electronic ballot of 115 members of the IOC. As expected, the voting went to a fourth round after first Moscow, then New York and Madrid, were eliminated in early rounds.

Lord Coe, the London 2012 bid leader, had earlier presented IOC members with a passionate final presentation in which he said a London games would show “magic happens”, and inspire young people around the world.

The London games will be based in the east of the city where a large area in the Lower Lea Valley will be regenerated.

London’s chances grew after no city won more than 50% of the votes in the first round, meaning there was no instant winner. The London 2012 tactic had been to court Madrid’s supporters if the Spanish capital was eliminated.

Mr Blair, who left Singapore last night after three months of frenetic campaigning and two days of last-gasp courting of IOC members, had earlier promised work would start on preparing the games “within 48 hours” of a successful bid.

Today the prime minister said many people recognised London was the best city in the world. He said Paris had a very strong bid but that London offered a great legacy for the city, the country and the Olympic movement. He admitted that when he arrived in Singapore that London only had an “outside chance”.

He said the bid had succeeded because the British people were behind it. Mr Blair denied the win would make the G8 summit starting tonight more difficult, with a disappointed French president, Jacques Chirac, due to arrive in Scotland this afternoon after leaving Singapore earlier today. Mr Chirac will have learned the result while en route to Scotland.

David Beckham and a host of sporting celebrities have been in Singapore pressing for a London games. London last hosted the Olympics in 1948 and will become the first city to host sport’s biggest event three times.

An emotional Beckham was in the hall to hear the result. He said later that winning the games was an “incredible” victory.

Today’s result is also a huge victory for Lord Coe, who has transformed a bid which was originally seen as something of a joke. In an IOC evaluation report last year, London was ranked third in the race behind Paris and Madrid and its transport system was castigated as “obsolete”.

The London team improved its bid and assuaged concerns about transport to secure a much better write-up in a subsequent IOC evaluation report published earlier this year.

Lord Coe said winning the Olympics was “massive … huge”. He told Sky News: "I feel absolutely ecstatic we’ve got the opportunity to do what I’ve always dreamed about in British sport which is to involve more young people.

“I think the quality of the bid and the vision behind the bid and the fact that we had London is a pretty healthy start.”

He said he would be involved in hosting the games but that his first priority was to get some sleep.

The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, said she could not believe London had won, but promised a games that would show the country’s passion for sport and provide inspiration for the next generation.

Ms Jowell said: “We’ve come from nowhere to win the Olympics and that is quite something. I really want to say thank you: there have been thousands of people involved in this.”

She said she initially thought Paris had won because the photographers in the hall had moved over to where the French team were.

She believed the quality of the London presentation had been the crucial factor in its victory and said IOC members had told her how impressive they had found it. During the presentation, which focused on inspiring the young, the Princess Royal had read a message from the Queen inviting the IOC members to Buckingham Palace if London prevailed.

The Olympic Games in London could be worth more than £2bn in tourism revenue for the country, the VisitBritain organisation said. The television rights are expected to also be worth more than £2bn.

The Association of British Travel Agents’ president Martin Wellings said the games would provide a “welcome shot in the arm” for the UK tourist industry.

When asked if holding the games would cause taxes to rise, Mr Blair said the event had been costed and would benefit the country.

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THE SYDNEY CONNECTION AND THE AUSSIES WHO STIRRED UP DOUBTS ABOUT THE PARIS CENTREPIECE, THE STADE DE FRANCE

London’s bid for 2012

Flavour of Australia gives bid its bite

Alex Brown
Wednesday July 6, 2005
The Guardian

Aside from the glamour of the Beckhams and the influence of the Blairs London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics had a distinctly antipodean flavour with a team that has borrowed heavily from the hugely successful Sydney 2000 games.
To the casual observer Cathy Freeman does not possess the physical presence of Matthew Pinsent nor the paparazzi pout of Victoria Beckham.

Still, having been the face, heart and soul of Sydney, rated the best Games ever by the then president of the International Olympic Committee Juan Antonio Samaranch, Freeman’s status among the committee members is significant. It has been an interesting move, accepting an amb- assadorial role with the London team despite being the iconic figure of the Sydney Games, during which she lit the cauldron, won the 400m and drew together white and Aboriginal Australians as never before.

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She conceded yesterday in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that the pressure of representing London in this race outstripped anything she experienced in 2000.
“I am out of control on this one,” she said. "I am such a good judge of character and Sebastian [Coe] is such a wonderful leader, I do not question his passion for the Games.

Freeman is just one of the Australians recruited by the London team ahead of today’s vote. Jim Sloman and Rod Sheard, the outspoken Australian duo who played integral roles in the Sydney Games, played their part to perfection on Monday with some well-timed criticism of the Stade de France, the showpiece of Paris’s bid.

In avoiding a reprimand by the IOC, the pair may even have succeeded in planting doubt in the minds of the vote-casters regarding the Paris bid and, more specifically, the worthiness of the 80,000-seat stadium as an athletics venue.

Sloman, the former chief operating officer of the Sydney Games, suggested that using an existing stadium as the showpiece for an Olympic bid could prove counter-productive. And Sheard, an architect who helped draw up the plans for Stadium Australia and Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, claimed Stade de France was a poor venue from which to view athletics.

A spokesman was prompt to distance the London bid from the statements of Sloman and Sheard - never mind that both are on the team’s payroll.

But, the fact that neither was found to have contravened the IOC’s “spirit of fair play” clause hints that, just maybe, past bidding experience could have played a role in their comments.

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This seems very unParisian! :stuck_out_tongue: For the few months I lived in Paris they seemed very happy to criticise the English (Often with good reason and in most cases I was in full agreement)!

I don’t know if London deserved it because I havn’t been following the debate too closely. All i know is that they did try hard and spent a lot on advertising on the Underground. Lets hope the UK can now deliver.

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By Bill Barclay

LONDON - As a runner, Sebastian Coe habitually hovered on his rivals’ shoulders before sprinting to victory down the home straight.

On Wednesday the tactic again served him perfectly as he successfully led London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics by edging past favourites Paris in the final vote.

Elegant on the track and eloquent off it, Coe was Britain’s finest middle distance runner and the only man to have won consecutive Olympic 1,500 metres gold medals.

Together with an astonishing 800 metres world record that stood for 16 years, those triumphs in 1980 and 1984 in the blue riband event of the Olympic athletics programme earned him recognition as one of the true sporting greats.

Outside athletics Coe applied his verbal polish to Conservative Party politics before assuming the task in May 2004 of selling London’s bid to the world, a venture that ended in stunning success after the closest Olympic bid race ever.

Coe described the success as a dream come true. “It’s just the most fantastic opportunity to do everything we ever dreamed of in British sport.”

Born in southwest London, Coe spent much of his childhood further north in Sheffield.

His flowing running style, a fusion of perfect form and natural rhythm suffixed by lacerating acceleration, was the product of a youth running uphill in all weathers, pursuing excellence.

The Coes believed running downhill placed too much stress on the knees, so young Seb’s training regime involved running up hills around his Sheffield home for 10 miles (16 km), accompanied by his father Peter playing Wagner in the family car.

DEVASTATING KICK

It took Coe until the age of 22 to confirm his extraordinary talent on the international stage. In the space of 41 days in 1979 he broke three of athletics’ most prestigious world records – the 800 metres, the mile and the 1,500 metres.

His ability to kick twice did for almost all his opponents and there were few finer sights in sport than that of the slender Briton leaving his rivals flailing after a devastating surge to victory down the home straight.

Arriving at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Coe was a strong favourite for the 800 metres. However, a disastrous tactical run left him scrambling for silver while his more streetwise rival, compatriot Steve Ovett, took gold.

A few days later Coe lined up for the 1,500 metres, generally considered Ovett’s better event. Before the gun his face was a mask, the usual princely air replaced by the taut expression of a man whose reputation was on the line.

“He doesn’t like being beaten, he hates it,” former middle distance rival David Moorcroft once said. “You saw it in his eyes when you ran, that ice-cold determination to get to the finishing line first.”

Redemption was swift.

As if pursued by the very demons that had undone him a few days earlier, Coe ran scared, hitting the front early and kicking away down the home straight.

He crossed the line open-armed and open-mouthed, his eyes staring, providing one of the iconic snapshots of the pain and joy involved in winning Olympic gold.

The following year he and Ovett exchanged the mile record three times in the space of a week as middle-distance running basked in a golden era.

Arguably Coe’s greatest athletic achievement came in Florence, Italy, in June when he set an astonishing 800 metres world record of one minute 41.73 seconds. The mark stood for 16 years.

OLYMPIC FAVOURITE

His exploits took their toll, however. His increasingly fragile health caused him problems and in 1983 he underwent an operation to remove a lymph node.

Coe appeared to be some way short of his peak when he travelled to Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympics. He repeated his 800 silver from Moscow but compatriot Steve Cram started favourite for the 1,500.

Coe took his younger rival by surprise with an early kick and held his lead down the home straight to seal a second successive gold.

Two years later he rounded off his remarkable career by belatedly capturing a major 800 metre outdoor title with a late surge to victory at the European championships.

Retirement beckoned and Coe began to plot a very different future, this time running for office as a member of parliament for the then-ruling Conservative Party. In 1992 he won a seat in a south-west English constituency.

Political opponents proved far tougher than his track rivals, however, and Coe was swept away with many of his party colleagues in their disastrous 1997 election defeat.

He resurfaced as chief of staff to the party’s youthful new leader William Hague and a bruising few years followed – not least when Hague reportedly caused Coe to pass out during one of their regular judo bouts.

Hague was trounced in the 2001 election but the experience was to stand Coe in good stead for future battles and consolation arrived in his elevation to the upper House of Lords.

As one of the world’s great Olympians, the world of sports politics seemed his natural home and in 2003 he became vice-chairman of London’s 2012 Olympic bid.

In May the following year he replaced Barbara Cassani as head of a bid that, like Coe in his track heyday, found itself on the shoulder of the leaders approaching the home straight.

Taking control, he led the campaign with dexterity and authority, impressing even the most sceptical.

That look of ecstasy returned to his face for all to see again on Wednesday.