Risky Bid-ness

After reading my friend Josh's blog about his analysis of the Chicago 2014 Olympic bid campaign, I got rejuvenated about the whole Olympic bid process. For years, I have been following a website called GamesBids.com, which tracks the news about upcoming Olympic bids and selection processes.

For everyone's knowledge, every two years an Olympic host is selected, 7 years prior to the start of the selected Olympics. This July, 3 cities will duke it out for the honor of hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. It's a huge jockeying event of local support, continents against continents, financial strength and national pride.

The candidates for 2014 have been shortlisted to the following cities:


South Korea vs. Austria vs. Russia. Who will win?

And also tomorrow here in Washington (should I go and crash the decision?), the U.S. Olympic Committee has to decide if its candidate city for 2016 Summer will be Chicago or Los Angeles. Frankly I think Chicago deserves it more and would do a good job. But in reality I love both O'Hare and LAX!

The fact of the matter is that I love everything about the Olympics. I am a fiend for it when they are on every two years and what's even more fun is watching the videos of the candidate city selection annoucement. The head of the IOC (now Belgian, Jacques Rogge) reads a letter as three groups of candidate city groups (mayors, financiers, chambers, sponsoring athletes, etc.) wait with baited breath. As the winning city is read, one crowd jumps for joy as other dreams are shattered. Kind of a mini-Olympics?

Here are some recent bid announcements:
London 2012 (Official Video & clip from Trafalgar Square)
Vancouver 2010 (Official Video - go to 2:20 in clip)
Harrisburg 2008 (Got ya!)

So stay tuned - July 4, 2007, the place is Guatemala City - find out where Matt Lauer (who will be completely bald by then) and Meredith Vieira are going to be setting up shop...