Paris to lose on 'schmooze'?
The phenomenon is called ''airline shrinkage" and it's what college basketball coaches say happens to that 6-foot-10-inch recruit who turns out to be 6-7 after he's made the trip from home to campus. That's what seems to have afflicted Paris, which apparently went from a 1-6 favorite to a wobbly front-runner once the International Olympic Committee members arrived in Singapore for this morning's vote to choose the host city for the 2012 Summer Games.
Did the Lords of the Rings have a bad bottle of Bordeaux in the first-class cabin? Did Jacques Chirac say something gauche? Did Queen Elizabeth offer to pass out knighthoods if London won the bid? Or was it simply ''favoritis," the sometimes fatal disease that strikes sure things on the eve of the balloting?
By any measure, Paris has the best overall package of facilities, transportation, and accommodations. The city hasn't staged the Games since 1924 and is bidding for the third time in 20 years in a process where persistence counts. And it prevails on the ''wives factor," i.e. where the members' spouses most want to tour, dine, and shop for three weeks.
So why was Paris suddenly said to be stumbling while London and New York were gaining? Because of the ''schmooze" effect, which kicks in as soon as the bidders get a chance to get up close and personal with the voters in the hotel lobby. Because of the backroom dealing that happens whenever a host-city vote figures to go multiple ballots, which most do. And because, for the first time, there are five exceptional bid cities, three of which have staged previous Games. ''Each has a chance of winning the gold medal," said IOC president Jacques Rogge, who'll announce the winner between 7:30 and 8 EDT.
Since most Olympic insiders expected the selection to go the full four ballots and be decided by a handful of votes, the schmoozing and dealing and paranoia was unusually intense. Yesterday, the British were denying rumors of a three-way arrangement among London, New York, and Madrid to have their supporters vote for one of the other two instead of Paris if they were eliminated. ''You simply cannot have people 'ganging up' on someone else," said Craig Reedie, one of the British members.
Tell that to Salzburg, which was scrubbed after the first ballot for the 2010 Winter Games, evidently because the European members thought that an Austrian victory would kill the continent's chances for 2012. This time, the dealing is strictly intramural, which is why New York, a 25-1 longshot for months, figured to have a decent chance.
If you accept the Moveable Feast theory, which has the Games rotating around the planet, a European victory today puts the continent out of play for at least two quadrennia, since the Americas, Asia/Oceania, and Africa must have their turn. (The summer rotation, since 1980, has been Europe, North America, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, Europe, Asia).
Which means that it was in the interest of every eliminated European bidder to make sure that New York won. ''You can conjure up a scenario like that," muses Dick Pound, an IOC member from Canada. ''But I'm not sure the members are thinking about what will happen in 2020. It's more like what's going to happen now."
What was going to happen this morning, nobody knew. The last time these global ringmasters convened for a host vote in Prague two summers ago, they came within three votes of selecting a resort city (Pyeongchang) that nobody but the Koreans had ever seen.
The fact is, despite the thick bid books and the detailed report from the IOC evaluation commission, the members have a history of ignoring empirical data and voting out of prejudice (pro and con) and whimsy. Why did favorite Salt Lake City lose the 1998 winter bid to obscure Nagano? Because most members were tired of coming to America. Why did Athens lose the 1996 summer bid to Atlanta? Because the Greek bid chief had declared, 'Morally, the Games belong to us.' " ''There are a lot of reasons why people won't vote for you," says Jay Kriegel, executive director of New York's bid.
The trick is to identify those who will, especially as the equation changes. Two things happen after each round: the last-place city is eliminated and its country's members get to vote. Which means that more people have fewer options. The object is to remain one of them.
That's how Atlanta did it, staying alive until Toronto went out on the fourth ballot, then grabbing its neighbor's votes. That's how Sydney did it in the 2000 summer race, hanging in for three rounds until the only other choice was Beijing, which was too controversial (in 1993, at least) for the IOC's tastes.
The secret is to avoid the untimely stumble, which may be why Paris, which had been tiptoeing quietly toward the finish, appeared to be losing ground during the last few days. And why the London bidders made a point of arriving in Singapore more than a week early for a ''training camp" -- to recover from airline shrinkage.
