Bidding process | ||
Bidding process By 15 July 2003, the deadline for interested cities to submit bids to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), nine cities had submitted bids to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. These cities were Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York City, Paris and Rio de Janeiro. Since the United Kingdom hosted the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, three bids had been made for a British city to host the Summer Olympics – Birmingham for the 1992 Games and Manchester for the 1996 and 2000 Games. Preliminary planning for a possible London bid for the 2012 Olympics began in 1997. The United Kingdom had successfully hosted the 1996 UEFA European Football Championships and the 2002 Commonwealth Games which regenerated a large part of east Manchester. Both events satisfied the IOC that the United Kingdom as a whole could host large sporting events and generated impetus for the country to host many events in the 2010s. On 18 May 2004, the IOC, as a result of a scored technical evaluation, reduced the number of cities to five: London, Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris. All five cities submitted their candidate files by 19 November 2004, and were visited by the IOC inspection team during February and March 2005. The Paris bid suffered two setbacks during the IOC inspection visit: a number of strikes and demonstrations coinciding with the visits, and a report that a key member of the bid team, Guy Drut, would face charges over alleged corrupt party political finances. On 6 June 2005, the IOC released its evaluation reports for the five candidate cities. Although these reports did not contain any scores or rankings, the evaluation report for Paris was considered the most positive, followed closely by London, which had narrowed most of the gap observed by the initial evaluation in 2004 regarding Paris. New York and Madrid also received very positive evaluation reports. Throughout the process, Paris was widely seen as the favourite to win the nomination, particularly as this was its third bid in recent history. Originally London was seen as lagging Paris by a considerable margin; however, the situation began to improve with the appointment of Lord Coe as new head of London 2012 on 19 May 2004. On 6 July 2005, the final selection was announced at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore. Moscow was the first city to be eliminated, followed by New York and Madrid. The final two cities left in contention were London and Paris. At the end of the fourth round of voting, London won the right to host the 2012 Games with 54 votes, defeating Paris's 50. The celebrations in London were short-lived, being overshadowed by bombings on London's transport system less than 24 hours after the announcement. | ||
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