2018 bid cities make campaign pitches to IOC ? Artesia News

Katarina Witt, left, chairwoman of the Munich 2018 Winter Olympic Games and Thomas Bach, IOC Vice President and President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, from left, arrive for the Munich presentation at the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, Wednesday, May 18, 2011. Munich, Germany, is competing against Pyeongchang, South Korea and Annecy, France, for the Olympic Winter Games in 2018. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) ? The three cities vying for the 2018 Winter Olympics took their campaign directly to the IOC on Wednesday, seeking to gain vital support just weeks ahead of the vote.

Bid teams from Munich; Annecy, France; and Pyeongchang, South Korea, made pitches to members of the International Olympic Committee in one of the most crucial phases of the global two-year campaign.

Third-time candidate Pyeongchang appeared to bolster its front-runner status, stressing it has kept all promises made to the IOC through a decade of bidding and pitching the games to a new winter sports market in Asia.

?We are very delighted that we could present our message directly to the IOC members,? bid leader Cho Yang-ho said. ?We showed our strengths.?

Munich enhanced its credentials as the main challenger, while Annecy showed it has improved dramatically in recent months and should not be counted out.

The South Koreans brought new star power to the show, with reigning Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na making her international debut to promote Pyeongchang?s bid. Another figure skating star, two-time Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt, chairs the Munich bid.

?I was so much more nervous than when I was competing in the Olympics, but I think it went well,? the 20-year-old Kim said. ?I had a little bit of a mistake, but nobody noticed, I hope. I?m very satisfied and happy that I did well.?

Asked what score she would give her performance Wednesday, Kim said: ?10, yeah.?

Each city had 45 minutes for presentations featuring speeches and videos, followed by another 45 minutes for questions and answers. IOC President Jacques Rogge said members asked a total of 27 questions.

The IOC said 88 of its 110 members attended the closed-door briefings at the Olympic Museum. On Thursday, the members will visit the candidate cities? exhibition rooms at a Lausanne hotel and have face-to-face meetings with bid leaders.

?It was a good day for the International Olympic Committee,? Rogge said. ?Whoever wins will be able to stage very good games.?

The presentations are considered a milestone in the race, which culminates with the IOC vote on July 6 in Durban, South Africa.

?I think it?s very close,? Rogge said. ?Don?t ask me numbers, but it?s going to be a close race, definitely. I don?t expect a big gap between the three cities.?

In the day?s only unusual twist, one IOC member sought to raise the issue of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn?s arrest on sex assault charges in New York. Hicham el Guerrouj, a two-time Olympic gold medalist distance runner from Morocco, began to ask Annecy officials about the impact of the case on their bid but Rogge broke in to cut him off, saying the question was out of place.

IOC members said all three cities made convincing presentations, with no single candidate slipping up or standing out. As a result, Pyeongchang remains the one to beat.

The Korean city, bidding again after narrow defeats in the voting for the 2010 and 2014 Olympics, has been widely considered the favorite from the start as it seeks to bring the Winter Games to a new hub in Asia. The Winter Olympics have been held twice in Asia, both times in Japan (Sappporo 1972 and Nagano 1998).

Citing a 92 percent public approval rating, by far the highest of the three candidates, Pyeongchang said its bid was a ?national priority.? Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan noted that South Korea had spent $1.4 billion in developing an Olympic-caliber ski resort in the Alpensia mountains and is working on a high-speed rail link between Seoul and Pyeongchang.

Kim also said the government has set aside $2 million to set up an Olympic organizing committee that would take over within three months if Pyeongchang gets the games, and promised the current bid leadership would keep a main role in the project.

Munich, the 1972 Olympic host that is seeking to become the first city to stage both summer and winter games, has been trying to counter Pyeongchang?s status as favorite by pushing its argument for taking the games back to their European roots in a country with a long winter sports tradition.

?It?s of nobody?s interest if you lead a marathon race at 22 kilometers or 30 kilometers,? said Thomas Bach, an IOC vice president who is one of the top leaders of Munich?s bid. ?What this is about is to cross the finish line first and this we will know on the 6th of July, not before.?

Witt said the choice of an Olympic host city is ?about more than just geography,? a reference to Pyeongchang?s case for taking the Winter Games to Korea for the first time.

?It is a choice about the kind of Olympic experience the athletes of the future should have,? she said. ?In Munich in 2018, every Olympian and Paralympian will have just what they deserve: the single greatest experience of their lives.?

American IOC member Anita DeFrantz asked the Germans about the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics that left 11 Israeli athletes and coaches dead.

?The mayor (Christian Ude) could explain that the incident in ?72 had nothing to do with Munich as a city or with Germany,? Bach said. ?It was just the beginning of international terrorism, and we appreciated this question to make this clear.?

Munich received a major boost on Tuesday with the announcement that the bid had secured the last piece of property needed for the competition at the games, a tract of land in the finish area of the Kandahar downhill course in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Some landowners had previously refused to give up their land.

?We always promised that we would secure the land before the games,? Bach said. ?We just stated that we delivered on our promise.?

The Germans also played up their sponsorship market and promised that the Olympic movement would become richer if the games went to Munich.

?A Winter Games in Munich would elevate the brand, dramatically increase revenues to the entire Olympic family, and create even greater global appeal for the television broadcast,? Bach said.

Meanwhile, German President Christian Wulff?s office said the head of state will travel to Durban in July for the final presentation and vote.

Annecy had a lot at stake as its sought to establish itself as a true contender after being seen as a longshot for much of the race. After going through financial and leadership troubles, the bid has been strengthened in recent months. The French promise a traditional games in the heart of the Alps.

?I think we are all three even now,? IOC member and French ski great Jean-Claude Killy said after the presentation. ?We showed we are a good team. We have a good proposition. We are proud of it. We think we have nothing to envy of the other two bids.?

An IOC evaluation report last week cited a survey showing a public approval rating in Annecy of just 51 percent for the bid, lowest of the three candidates. But Killy said the support has grown to 65 percent.

?It reflects the quality of the bid being developed,? he said. ?The bid is now mature and the polls are a lot stronger today than they were six months ago.?

Senior Canadian IOC member Dick Pound said French officials did a good job in making Annecy?s case.

?I think they?ve thrown down a bit of a gauntlet,? he said. ?They are saying, ?All right, you guys need to think what you want for the future of the Olympic Winter Games. Are they big city games where you rent some mountains for two weeks or are they really Winter Games of snow and ice???

___

Stephen Wilson can be reached at http://twitter.com/stevewilsonap

This entry was posted on May 18, 2011, 9:40 am and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Source: http://www.artesianews.com/ap-news/sports-ap-news/2018-bid-cities-make-campaign-pitches-to-ioc/

space shuttle launch radon fandango spider monkey derek lowe