No special treatment for IOC
2005-02-02 19:34
Madrid - International Olympic Committee inspectors arriving to assess the Spanish capital's bid for 2012 Summer Games will be treated like ordinary citizens.
"There won't be anything artificial, any balloons, or a big welcoming committee," Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon said.
"We don't want to cheat, we want to show the reality," he said, speaking on Wednesday in a radio interview.
The mayor said there would be no presents for the inspectors, no private meetings with any of them. He said the IOC guests would stay in an ordinary hotel and would travel around the city by bus without any special police escort.
Regulations concerning the selection of Olympic cities have been tightened greatly since the Salt Lake City bid scandal, which led to the expulsion or resignation of 10 IOC members for receiving improper inducements.
Gifts are "absolutely prohibited," said Ruiz-Gallardon.
Madrid is the first stop on the IOC evaluation commission's tour of the five cities contesting the most glamorous bid race in Olympic history. The other candidates are Paris, London, New York and Moscow.
Posters proclaiming: "We're Ready for You" have been hung up across the city while some 300 journalists have been accredited to cover the panel's visit.
Paris the frontrunner
The panel, headed by former Olympic hurdles champion Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco, will study the Madrid proposal between Thursday and Sunday. It will then visit London (February 16-19), followed by New York (February 21-24), Paris (March 9-12) and Moscow (March 14-17).
Paris is widely considered the front-runner. The IOC's 100-plus members will select the host city by secret ballot in Singapore on July 6.
The evaluation panel will compile a report assessing the technical bids of all five cities and release it a month before the vote.
"The visit is decisive, It's all important for the candidacy," Ruiz-Gallardon said.
"We presented the best dossier," Ruiz-Gallardon said. "The commission has to now check that that dossier reflects reality."
Madrid claims to have 70% of its project already built or in the works.
Its Olympic ring - the revamped Peineta athletics arena - the Olympic village, the airport and the city's trade centre - which will host many events - will all be within a radius of 5km, organisers claim.
Athletes will be able to walk less than a kilometre from the Olympic village to the main stadium.
The project has a budget of €2.7b, the lowest of the five candidates.
The only major European capital which hasn't hosted the Olympics, Madrid finished second behind Paris in a preliminary IOC evaluation report last year. Spain's second city, Barcelona, hosted the games in 1992.
- AP