How UK won Olympic bid in the final straight
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-07-12 06:07

A week before the final vote in Singapore, Coe met Samaranch at the Mediterranean Games in Almeria and the two men are believed to have made a deal on tactics.

Under the informal agreement, whichever city was eliminated first in the IOC vote would urge its supporters to switch to the other. It was a classic piece of Olympic horse-trading no different from deals done between other contenders.

Crucial lobbying

If the finishing tape was in sight, there was still one more exhausting effort to be made to ensure victory, however.

It was past midnight when the last of the night's visitors emerged from Tony Blair's suite at the Raffles City convention complex in Singapore last week. The French team, monitoring the comings and goings amid the polished salons and marbled halls, seethed with jealousy and anger.

In a 48-hour lobbying marathon, Blair and his wife had met 64 of the 100 IOC members eligible to take part in the first round of voting.

Senator Hillary Clinton, representing New York, saw 40. Jacques Chirac, the French president, by his own aggrieved team's account, saw nobody.

The French did not like the British hard sell - "Lobbying is an English word," said one French official.

London's tactics did not stop with the Blairs. An array of sporting stars - including David Beckham, Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Matthew Pinsent and the athletes Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson - brought glamour to the bid.

Coe's team had also thought out its public relations drive carefully.

Rather than copy the others by extolling the virtues of its sporting facilities, it showed off London's strengths as a city of diversity.

Page:

1

2

3

4

Close

Special police detachment established in Xi'an Panda cubs doing well in Wolong Suspect arrested in Taiwan

Today's Top News     Top China News
Taiwan's KMT Party to elect new leader Saturday         'No trouble brewing,' beer industry insists         Critics see security threat in Unocal bid         DPRK: Nuke-free peninsula our goal         Workplace death toll set to soar in China         No foreign controlling stakes in steel firms	No foreign controlling stakes in steel firms       China-made telescopes race to space       'No trouble brewing,' beer industry insists       HK investors cautious on mainland homes       Law in pipeline to ban money laundering       Overseas students test their Chinese abilities