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Inspectors get royal welcome
18/02/2005 08:41 - (SA)
London - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II will be drafted into action in the cause of London's bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games when she hosts a Buckingham Palace dinner for the visiting International Olympic committee evaluation commission on Friday.
As well as making sure the 13-strong IOC team are entertained in style, the dinner is also designed to counter allegations of lukewarm support by the Queen for the London bid.
Her belief in the capital's chances was called into question when she reportedly told a teenager at a recent reception that Paris, the long-time favourite and one of five bidding cities in all, would win the race because of greater public support.
Emphasising the importance of Friday's dinner the full-size Royal Standard, usually reserved for state visits, will be flying over a floodlit Palace.
"Everyone has worked very hard to make this a special occasion," said Palace spokesperson Penny Russell-Smith.
Officials certainly have appeared to pull-out all the stops with guardsmen in bearskins on sentry duty and the Grand Entrance, inside the Palace Quadrangle, will be lit by torches in the style of the Olympic flame.
Princess Anne, herself a former Olympic three-day eventer, and now a member of the IOC, will greet VIP guests and escort them to the White Drawing Room to meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The 46 guests, which include British Prime Minister Tony Blair, will be shown to the State Dining Room where they will sit down to dinner.
The commission completes its assessment of London on Saturday, having already visited one of its four rivals in Madrid.
They then travel to New York (February 21-24), Paris (March 9-12) and Moscow (March 14-17).
Their final report, published in May, is not binding on IOC members but could prove influential when they vote on which one of the five candidates will stage the 2012 Games at a July 6 meeting in Singapore.
- AFP
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