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.
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