Race for 2016 Games heating up
ATHENS, Greece -- The race to host the 2016 Summer Olympics is about to get serious.
The International Olympic Committee executive board was meeting Wednesday to reduce the seven-city field to a shortlist of finalists, setting the stage for a high-profile, 16-month global bidding contest.
Up to five cities were expected to make the cut, and no fewer than three.
Fairly certain of making the cut are the big four -- Chicago; Madrid, Spain; Tokyo; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Expected to be eliminated are Prague, Czech Republic, and Baku, Azerbaijan.
The main issue is whether Doha, Qatar, will advance to the final stage.
After the announcement, the IOC was to release a report assessing the technical merits of the bids, offering an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates going into the final phase.
The race will end Oct. 2, 2009, when the full IOC picks the host city by secret ballot in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The 2016 campaign shapes up as a tight battle between strong candidates from the Americas, Europe and Asia.
Chicago is a contender to take the games back to the U.S. for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta Games. Madrid is back again after a third-place finish in the vote for the 2012 Olympics, which went to London. Tokyo, which held the games in 1964, hopes to bring the Olympics to Asia eight years after Beijing. And Rio, which hosted the 2007 Pan American Games, would be the first South American city to get the Olympics.
Doha, capital of a tiny but wealthy Arab Gulf country of about 1 million people, looms as the wild card as it seeks to bring the games to the Middle East for the first time. It cites its hosting of the 2006 Asian Games as evidence that it can handle the Olympics. Due to Qatar's searing summer heat, Doha proposes holding the games in October, outside the IOC's preferred time frame of July or August.
Some rival bid officials are worried that if Doha makes the shortlist, the city -- while a longshot to win -- would have the capacity to take away crucial votes in the early rounds of voting.
Chicago bid leader Patrick Ryan, for one, says it doesn't matter how many cities are in the final mix.
"Everybody has an opinion on that," he said. "What I hear is three, four or five, and hear arguments for each one of those numbers. If I'm guessing, I would say five. But what's most important is we stick to Chicago's plan. We're not looking at the number of candidates, just maximizing Chicago's potential."
Cities that make the cut will have to submit their detailed bid files to the IOC by February 12, 2009. After that, a panel of IOC experts will visit each of the cities, tour the proposed sites and meet with bid and government leaders. The panel will release an evaluation report to the IOC members a month before the October 2009 vote.
The 2016 cutoff is the centerpiece of a three-day IOC board meeting in Athens, the last before the committee gathers in Beijing on the eve of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics.