PARIS, Oct 17 (AFP) - International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has highlighted the need for a modest approach'' by candidates who are bidding to host the Olympic Games in 2012. Paris, London, New York, Moscow and Madrid will send in their dossiers to the IOC on November 15, who will scrutinise each bid over time until the final decision is made on July 6, 2005 when the IOC holds its 117th session in Singapore. In between times, the bidding cities will be doing everything possible to raise awareness of the benefits of their respective bids, which will include lobbying those at the heart of the decision-making process. However Rogge insists that all candidate cities, whatever their merits, will be measured on the strength of their initial dossier. Aggressive lobbying, he says, will get them nowhere. Avoiding mistakes until the final decision is made is vital,’’ Rogge told Le Journal de Dimanche when asked what Paris had to do to convince the IOC of its bid.
When the dossier is solid in itself, then managing the time that remains properly is about all that's left. You can lobby at institutional level, but not too much and without harrassing or spending too much. As soon as an IOC member has read the report (dossier) and met with the bid management two or three teams and established relations, not a lot will change.
The final decision will not change a week before the final decision. Modesty is a plus. It will always hold sway over a forceful approach.’’
Rogge, who outlined the success of Greece’s organisation of the Games this summer, where he was pleasantly surprised at the emergence of Asian nations such as Japan and China, said he was still determined to see the Games being organised on all five continents.
The Greeks proved that in a country of 10 million people you can organise the Olympics. In the longer term, our goal is to be able to host the Games on all the continents. Today, we still haven’t been to Africa or South America. But our policy of reducing the cost and complexity in organising the Games makes us believe that we will be able to take the Games to an increased number of countries in the future.’’
Rogge, however, dismissed the notion of alternating the hosting of the Games on different continents.
This rule just doesn't exist,'' he said. If two bidding cities carry the same potential to host the games, it’s possible that we would alternate on geopolitical lines so that there’s a balance between continents.
But only if their dossiers carry the same weight. If not, it’s the best who wins’’ added Rogge, who said the reason why Beijing won the 2008 Games was because it had never done so.
``2008 did not come down to technical criteria between Paris, Toronto and Beijing. What gave Beijing the edge was the fact that the world’s most populated country had never hosted the Games.’’