Bidding for the Games - 2016 Olympic Bids Head Back to Lausanne

(ATR) For one last time, leaders of the bids for the 2016 Olympics head back to Lausanne to meet with the IOC and make suggestions on how to improve the bidding process.

Representatives of Tokyo were the first to meet Thursday with IOC staff in two-hour sessions, followed by Chicago, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro.

IOC Olympic Games Executive Director Gilbert Felli led the debriefings, which always take place some months after the campaign for the Games is over. The meetings at IOC headquarters are the first time the 2016 cities have been together since Oct. 2 when Rio was voted the winner at the IOC Session in Copenhagen.

"We received the 2016 Candidate Cities as part of normal operating procedures, and all four provided us with good information that will help us with future candidate procedures. We will now present this information to our Executive Board," said Felli in a statement to Around the Rings.

So far only the team from Tokyo has gone public their ideas for change. At the top of the list: allowing IOC members to visit bid cities.

Once the rule for the IOC, bid city visits were the first casualty of the Salt Lake City vote-buying scandal of the late 1990’s. IOC President Jacques Rogge has steadfastly refused to go along with a return to bid city visits.

Japanese Olympic Committee international chief Yasuhiro Nakamori tells Around the Rings that in the case of Tokyo, "IOC members could see that it is not just a concrete jungle. They could receive a correct impression of the city," he said.

Nakamori says Tokyo also suggested a shorter international campaign, a move he says will reduce costs for bid cities.

Tokyo, as well as the other bids, have said they support the briefing for IOC members that debuted last June in Lausanne. The two-day briefing allowed the 2016 bids to present the technical aspects of their bids to nearly 90 IOC membersfour months before the vote. The presentations for the IOC members grew out of suggestions made at past bid city debriefings like the one held in Lausanne today.

Along with Nakamori, bid CEO Ichiro Kono, JOC board member and businessman Masato Mizuno and a representative from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government took part in the briefing for Japan.

The team of four from Chicago included USOC staffers Robert Fasulo and Chris Sullivan and Chicago 2016 executives Dave Bolger and John Murray.

CEO Mercedes Coghen brought a team from Madrid that also included managing director Antonio Fernandez and Spanish Olympic Committee secretary general Victor Sanchez.

Rio 2016 President Carlos Nuzman and marketing director Leonardo Gryner represented the Rio de Janeiro bid.

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Written by Ed Hula .

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