Ueberroth sweetens the Big Apple

New York's 2012 Olympic bid is causing a surprising stir. Alan Hubbard pays a visit

Six months from now, Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, will slit open the envelope containing the name of the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games. Few expect he will declare: "And the winner is... New York!"

The only non-European candidate among the five cities who will make their final presentations to the IOC in Singapore's Raffles Hotel is considered an outsider largely because of perceived global antipathy towards the United States over the Iraq war and the threat of terrorism.

I admit I went to New York believing its bid to be a no-brainer, at best a dry run for a more serious attempt to secure the Games of 2016, when Iraq may be almost as distant a memory as Vietnam. Now I am not so sure. The Big Apple has more going for it that its rivals may appreciate.

It is an innovative bid full of pleasant surprises, stylish and a tad showbizzy, as you would expect from a city that boasts Fifth Avenue and Friends. But it also has great substance. A helicopter's-eye view reveals the compactness and ambition which might just sway the IOC away from any political considerations. New Yorkers call it the X Factor.

This is a $3.3bn plan which encompasses 39 of the proposed 40 venues within a 2.5km radius with the Olympic village at its hub, and all of the events being held along north-south and east-west intersecting axes, stretching from the north shore of Staten Island to the north tip of Manhattan, and from Flushing Meadow in Queen's to Meadowlands in New Jersey.

The proposed village will overlook the United Nations building, two-and-a-half minutes by ferry across the East River. The organisers promise the highest-quality accommodation of any Olympic village, 4,600 units to be sold off later for "upmarket housing".

The bid spokesman, Jay Kriegel, explains: "Within that 2.5km you have the stadium, the village, 10 sports and the media and broadcasting centres - all in the centre of the city. Moreover, there are 60,000 hotel rooms within that area. The Games will take over the centre of the city, housing the athletes, the media, the spectators and most of the venues. Also you have Times Square, Broadway, Fifth Ave-nue, the Empire State Building and the United Nations, all of the great attractions in the city, concentrated where the athletes and spectators are."

In other words, virtually the entire Games would be held in the core of the Big Apple. The city that never sleeps also has never hosted the Olympic Games. New York may be bidding for the first time, but it has been thinking about it for years. The bid was conceived during football's World Cup of 1994 by a 46-year-old multi-millionaire and former investment banker, Dan Doctoroff, now New York's deputy mayor, whose vision is of 17 days of Olympic glory that will help heal the wounds of 9/11.

The New York 2012 office overlooks Ground Zero from a skyscraper that remained relatively untouched by the horror of that morning. The bid has also acquired the expertise of the man who changed the face of the Olympic movement - Peter Ueberroth, mastermind of the Los Angeles Games of 1984, which created the economic model for subsequent Games.

Ueberroth is the new chair of the US Olympic Committee, who have now patched up the wounds left by the scandal of Salt Lake City. He believes the IOC will judge New York solely on its capability to stage a successful Games.

"This is not a global popularity contest," he says. "Most IOC members will make their decision on how sport, the athletes and the Olympic movement will be best served. New York's bid stands tall in all of those categories."

New York also privately hopes that showing a new caring, sharing side of the US in the wake of the tsunami tragedy will aid their cause. Doctoroff, who hasmet all the voting IOC members, says: "It is not for us to say whether political considerations will factor in with any decision, but we believe, in conversations we have had with them, that they are looking for the bid that best achieves their objectives with regards to sport."

He agrees that the Islamic contingent on the IOC could be influential. "But this city has very strong relations with many Islamic countries and a great relationship with the Islamic community who live here. The city's history is one of bringing people together, many of whom have been outcast from other lands, welcoming them and giving them an opportunity and a chance to compete fairly. After all, that's what the Olympics are all about."

But here's the rub. The bid could finally be scuppered, not in Iraq, but on its own water-front. The proposed Olympic stadium, to be built on a platform over a railyard at a cost of $1.4bn, is the subject of a legal wrangle which may not be settled by the time the IOC Evaluation Commission visit New York on 21 February. The New York Jets NFL team would pay half the cost, the rest to be shared by city and state. But the worry is that it still has to survive crucial votes in the state legislature and city council.

If it does, then putting aside this Londoner's patriotism and an ingrained conviction that 2012 is preordained for Paris, New York has almost won me over. The question remains whether it will have a similar effect on the IOC.