Beijing out in front as they enter the straight

This morning in Moscow an epic race comes to an end

This morning in Moscow an epic race comes to an end. Years of lobbying, campaigning, beautifying and rumouring reach a climax when 1430 or so members of the International Olympic Committee gather to decide who will host the 2008 Olympic Games.

The nature of these races has changed a little over the years. Toronto, a front runner this morning, has long since managed to overcome the Canadian tendency to begin shaking violently whenever the prospect of hosting a Games is mentioned.

Since Montreal went broke hosting the 1976 Games the Olympic movement has discovered television and they have discovered Juan Antonio Samaranch, a leader who could pimp his great love and shamelessly milk the applause while doing so. The Games have changed. They are no longer a duty - they are an opportunity. Candidate cities come here hoping in the words of one lobbyist to "make out like bandits".

The Games bring the attention of four billion television viewers to the winning city; leave a large scale infrastructural legacy ranging from roads to stadia to affordable housing units; bring an environmental clean-up; create up to 200,000 temporary jobs; provoke £6 billion worth of economic activity and then go away again.

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"The Olympic experience for cities like Sydney and Barcelona has been awesome," says Bob Richardson, chief operating officer of the Toronto bid. "If you do this right, it can be a huge economic and cultural boost to your city."

As such there is a lot at stake this morning when Osaka begins the first of a series of hour long presentations from the bid cities. Cities have spent heavily just to get here and today's presentations are a last pitch to the IOC electorate.

Osaka will be followed by Paris, then Toronto with Beijing and then Istanbul making presentations after lunch. Voting should begin at around 5.30 p.m. Moscow time. The favourites, of course, are Beijing, who bring to the table a candidacy which has divided the Olympic movement in not an unfamiliar fashion.

Advocates of the Beijing bid argue towards the pragmatic pointing to a population of more than a billion people in China and the eagerness of the world business community to get their hands into that many pockets. In this scenario the Olympics are supposed to stand for a symbolic invitation that China is open for business.

As such the Games would be a final impramatur rather than a champagne bottle launching a nation onto the commercial high seas.

China has been open for business for some time. General Motors signed a four-year deal with the Chinese Olympic Committee, and UPS a significant Olympic sponsor recently ran ads noting, "China's 1.26 billion people can't wait to get your products." The complementary view is that a Beijing Games would open Chinese society in the way the awarding of the 1988 Olympics prodded South Korea from military dictatorship to a democracy. However, certain things won't go away and the Chinese have been uncomfortable this week. The European Parliament and members of the United States Congress have called for the Games to be held elsewhere in view of China's record on human rights. China will note that the IOC is still bruised by the critical interest both bodies took in its troubles over drugs and bribery scandals in recent years but there is an uneasiness about the bid, especially with South Korea's Kim Un Yong showing well in polls for Monday's presidential vote. Asia is unlikely to be favoured twice.

China has been dealing awkwardly with the spotlight. Jiang Zemin, president of China, announced recently that the Communist Party would open itself more to private business owners and young entrepreneurs. There has been speculation all week that several political prisoners would be tried and deported or even released this week but such a gesture may have been reconsidered.

Opponents remember in 1993, when Toronto last bid, that high profile dissidents were released before the vote only to be back in prison again within six months. Sidney Jones, Asia director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, was quoted this week to the effect that the IOC had ignored calls to seek human rights guarantees from Beijing. "It would seem to be a slap in the face of the whole spirit of the Olympics if they would go to China."

Whether IOC members are listening or not is a moot point. As a body they don't just enjoy the principles of one man one vote but bring several agendas per member to the ballot box also.

This morning the idiosyncratic IOC members will vote electronically for the first time. No IOC member may vote while his or her own country is still in the race, which means that on the elimination of Paris say, Toronto would hope to benefit from the votes of the three French members being brought into play.

By then, the third round, that is when the voting should really have got tight. Osaka and Istanbul will be eliminated early.

At that stage Paris and Toronto are hoping that Beijing will be stuck around the 40 vote mark leaving them enough leeway to catch up.

The feeling is that with Europe rostered to host the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and the winter Games of 2006 in Turin, Toronto could squeeze ahead of Paris at this point. NBC who have paid $3.5 billion for rights to the games from 2000 through 2008 are likely to prefer the north American cities time-zone, an other significant factor.

So Paris could be the loser leaving Toronto and Beijing head to head in the fourth and final round. At that stage it comes down to a straightforward test of how much the IOC itself has changed. New younger delegates have been added who are believed to place the value of sport above the musty old precepts of "official Olympism".

We shall have to wait and see.