OLYMPICS Vancouver has edge for 2010 Winter Games

Austria and South Korea are the two others in the running.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- In the live-from-New York special he filmed last year for HBO, comedian Robin Williams launched into an extended riff about Canada and the Winter Olympics and made it sound as if there's no there there up beyond the United States.
Canada, he said, "is like a loft apartment over a really great party."
As the International Olympic Committee gathers here to vote Wednesday on the site of the 2010 Winter Games, all indications are that the party may well be headed north to Canada -- and west to Vancouver, British Columbia, maybe even in a laugher of an election.
Vancouver is running against only two other cities, Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeongchang, South Korea.
For reasons as diverse as the 2012 Summer Games selection two years from now to Vancouver's undeniable beauty and cosmopolitan appeal to a bid based on a projection of Canadian identity and solidarity, it has emerged in recent weeks as the choice to beat. Some even predict a first-round victory.
Others, however, say Vancouver is by no means a lock and note that nothing in the IOC can ever be considered a certainty, particularly in the often-volatile first round of an election.
Must overcome issues
Vancouver, they note, must overcome a range of issues that tend to surface in the intensely personal, occasionally petty and frequently nationalistic mix that is IOC politics -- among them, a lingering resentment in some quarters aimed at longtime Canadian IOC member Dick Pound of Montreal and, separately, at the awarding at last year's Salt Lake City Games of duplicate gold medals to Canadian pairs skaters.
As Paul Henderson, an IOC member who lives in Toronto, put it late last week, "Vancouver is going into the last [few] days in the lead. Can they make it to the finish line?"
In many ways, the election Wednesday serves as prelude to the selection of the 2012 Summer Games site, and of all the complex factors that go into the picking of the 2010 city, none is more complicated than trying to divine how -- or even if -- the 2012 race will end up deciding who gets 2010.
The 2012 race has attracted a lineup of world-class cities, including New York, London, Paris, Moscow and Madrid, Spain. Other 2012 candidates include Leipzig, Germany; Havana; Istanbul, Turkey; and either Sao Paolo or Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If Vancouver loses, Toronto may enter the 2012 contest.
All things being equal, the IOC prefers to rotate the Games among continents. In 1996 the Summer Games were held in Atlanta. In 2000 the Games were in Sydney, Australia. In 2004 they will be in Athens, Greece. In 2008 they will be in Beijing.
Rio candidate for 1012
If Rio de Janeiro, for example, is ready, it could be a formidable 2012 candidate; the IOC has never held the Summer Games in South America (or Africa).
Rio will host the 2007 Pan American Games. But the IOC will select the 2012 site in 2005 -- two years before the Pan Am Games test whether the Brazilian economy, security apparatus and other infrastructure is up to the gargantuan enterprise that is the Summer Olympics.
If South America is out of the mix, then for reasons of geographical rotation, North America, meaning New York, would appear to have an advantage. But the IOC is dominated by European members -- 58 of the current 124 members are from Europe -- and with at least five European cities in the 2012 race, there is ample sentiment among the dominant bloc to bring the Summer Games back to Europe.
Thus, in what is perceived to be a shot at the 2012 chances of New York and Toronto, Vancouver would get the benefit of considerable European support for 2010.
That, at least, is the theory, and it has the Salzburg team, for one, concerned.
"This question of 2010, 2012, different regions, seems to be very important," said Egon Winkler, head of the Salzburg bid. "I'm not saying that because I like it. If it plays a really big role, it's not favorable for Salzburg. It is a question of mathematics."
A contrary view, one favored by the Salzburg contingent, is that the European members can have it all -- 2010 and 2012. And why not? The Games will be in Europe for both Summer and Winter in 2004 and 2006, in Athens and then Turin, Italy. The Winter Games went to Europe twice in a row in the 1990s -- in Albertville, France, in 1992, and Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994.