From the Washington Post: the US Olympic Committee has eliminated DC-Baltimore from consideration. Why?
"Washington did not fall down," Moore said. ". . . It was very close -- very, very close. We did not make a decision just on raw scoring. We were looking for the city that could win the international competition. . . .
"We felt Washington made an outstanding candidate. . . . On the other hand, it does take that anti-American [sentiment]. [Congress] brought Mr. Samaranch in and grilled him quite a bit. You could say some of that lingers. . . . Washington did all the right things . . . but you have to look at both sides of that coin with how we perceive the IOC."
Because it's the US capital, and some of our international friends on the IOC might reject it just for that reason.
A source from within the Washington-Baltimore bid team said Knise and Morton were frustrated that the USOC site evaluation team had never discussed with them the USOC's political concerns regarding Washington as the nation's capital. "At some point, I would like to know what the deficiencies were, and what we could have done better," Knise said. Washington's bid effort began six years ago, survived a rocky leadership change and cost nearly $10 million. Knise and Morton said they would spend the coming days trying to figure out how to close down the bid group's operations while leaving a legacy to the community -- aside from the legacy of community cooperation they believe the bid effort brought, uniting Baltimore and Washington in a way many once thought impossible.
San Francisco and New York survive in the bid process. Why?
San Francisco, which like Washington put forward a revised bid this spring, apparently profited not only by its bid revision but also by the perception that it's a city on the fringe of America, far away from the seat of power that proved a problem for the Washington-Baltimore bid. New York, meantime, benefited from its undisputed international status and the fact that members compared the cities with an eye to the future, which mitigated the high-cost construction projects that had troubled several site selection team members.
Oh, I see. New York has international status. That's why terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, right? And I suppose I should be pleased that San Francisco's famous "fringiness" is now working in its favor (although I wonder how some of the more conservative nations will feel about that). Yup, makes perfect sense.
Sorry, this isn't a coherent response. I'm just pissed.
Write to me!
