2012 - The Story Of An Olympic Games Bid

During the first week of July in 2005 a seminal occasion took place.

Singapore was the location of this event. In the Raffles City Centre Convention Centre - the naming of which bore the hallmarks of a British colonial past - the ordinary 117th Session on the IOC (International Olympic Committee) took place. The purpose of the IOC Ordinary Session was to undertake perhaps their most important recurring function. That function was to chose the location to host the 30th modern Summer Olympic Games.

Initially, there had been 9 cities jockeying to hold the 2012 Olympic Games. On the 18th May 2004, these were whittled down to five main contenders. Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig and Rio de Janeiro had been unable to persuade on technical valuation and were removed from the continuing procedure.

5 names were offered to the final voting mechanism. The cities chosen for the eventual ruling were London, Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris. Of these, Paris carried the influence of being the front runner.

So, the fateful day in 2005 subsequently arrived and the IOC met in Singapore to embark upon a decision that would carry with it gigantic financial consequences.

The strategy was simply. Each of 104 allowed IOC delegates would take part in a consecutively held number of secret votes. After each ballot, if no candidate city had acquired an absolute majority of the votes cast, the city with the least votes would stand down and a following ballot be taken.

After some nervous rounds of voting, the 3 superior contenders emerged from the five short-listed candidates. London, Madrid and Paris. Moscow had fallen at the first hurdle and New York was stopped after the 2nd ballot.

Regardless of the fact that Madrid and London had both polled greater votes than Paris in the first two ballots, the French capital was still regarded by many as the favourite to collect the eventual prize. Due to the vagaries of the voting maneuvers of some IOC delegates, at the next to last voting stage, Madrid, which had lead the race at the 2nd ballot with 32 votes, was purged collecting only 31 votes. This left London confronting Paris in the concluding ballot.

The widely held assumption of the press and professional soothsayers was that Paris "was not to be denied".

London's bid had previously been evaluated as having many positive elements in reports drawn up by the IOC in 2004 and 2005. However, the general opinion within the various IOC evaluation committees was that Paris held the advantage over its cross-channel opponent.

History also seemed to be against Great Britain. Proposals by Birmingham (1992) and twice by Manchester (1996 and 2000) had all been unsuccessful. The record was rather dismal. Whereas, Paris had bid for the 1992 Summer Olympics and then again in 2008, when it came third behind hot favourite Beijing. The general impression in the run up to the 117th IOC Session was that Paris was owed a successful bid.

The concluding outcome is now history. Festivities by the UK team within the Convention Centre were more than matched by great cries of joy from a whopping crowd paying attention to the proceedings live on vast screens constructed in Trafalgar Square, Central London. The spot of the home crowd was, perchance, foretelling - the Battle of Trafalgar being possibly the most recognized of British triumphs over their long time adversary.

So, London became the first city to have the privilege of hosting the modern Olympiad three times, having had the honour in the summer's of 1908 and 1948.

But, what will be the probable financial burden to London and its taxpayers? Can the United Kingdom capital put into practice the elusive feat of staging a modern Olympics and if truth be told make a paper profit from it? Or, will a inheritance of debt hang about long after the visual gaming glories, that surely await us in the Fall of 2012?