TURKISH DELIGHT ON A MOONLIT NIGHT: Tomorrow the IOC will be deciding between the bids of Istanbul, Madrid, and Tokyo to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. Who will/should it be?
edited Saturday 4:36p: It's Tokyo, which will host the Summer Games for the first time since 1964.
It's nobody's business but the Turks.
ReplyDelete(And should be Istanbul/will be Madrid -- gotta believe that the now well-rotted corpse of Samaranch still demands to be bribed)
I was going to say that it will be whoever's the most corrupt. Madrid and Tokyo were also-rans in the 2016 process, never picking up significant support when Chicago and then Tokyo dropped out, so my money's on Istanbul.
ReplyDeleteJon Wertheim from SI, in one of his daily US Open Q&A columns, said this: "Last summer in London, a high-ranking source told me that the 2020 Summer Olympics 'are Istanbul's to lose.' That no longer seems to be the case." So we'll see what happens.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the IOC, I'm very curious to see how the lead-up to Sochi continues to unfold, wrt Russia's anti-gay laws and the IOC's request/demand that athletes not protest in any way.
Istanbul is the most interesting choice and Tokyo is the most practical choice, so you have to think the IOC will go with Madrid.
ReplyDeleteChicago never dropped out. The bribery forced them out in favor of the oncoming Rio disaster.
ReplyDeleteEliminated during the voting process.
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to believe the city of Chicago could lose in a bribery contest.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but this is the IOC where Chicago ran up against the professionals.
ReplyDeleteproposal: IOC buys an island in the Azores and turns it into a permanent Summer Olympics site.
ReplyDeleteThe conventional wisdom is that the IOC went with the "safe" choice -- although hosting the Games 150 miles from a nuclear disaster gives you some perspective on the IOC's definition of "safe." Safe from an economic standpoint maybe. On a personal level, I was hoping for Madrid, just because I hate long plane rides, and the flight from New York to Tokyo is a killer.
ReplyDeleteBut how long would it be before our Summer Games athletes were forced to live on the island and compete 24/7 for our viewing pleasure?
ReplyDeleteSomeday the olympic athletes' descendants become then-modern birds.
ReplyDelete