The five short-list bids for the 2012 Olympics were submitted today. This marks the start of the final evaluation stage. IOC officials will visit each of the candidate sites. The full IOC membership will choose the winner in a vote on 6 July 2005. The short list includes five candidates: London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, and Paris.
Four cities (Istanbul, Leipzig, Havana, and Rio de Janeiro) were earlier rejected and did not make the short list.
Moscow has got to be considered the longest shot here, but hell, if Atlanta can host the Olympics, I suppose anything is possible.
New York seems to have two fairly significant political problems. One, local opposition (e.g. NewYorkGames.org and Hells Kitchen Online) seems vocal and well-organized; and two, the U.S. is currently rather unpopular.
That leaves one of the big three EU capitals. The winner will be the group that can win votes from outside of Europe. I will wager that the technical and sporting merits of the three bids play very little role in the outcome this time.
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