London's theme wins IOC hearts

OLYMPIC GAMES LONDON 2012: "Exhausted!" said Ken Livingstone as he emerged into the light. His moment of basking in the sun would be shared with his nemesis Tony Blair, but it wasn't about that. Livingstone, as canny a populist as Blair, hit on the theme which had made the difference.

"This was about giving today's children the chance to do what Seb Coe and others have done. We made it clear that it was about the chances we give to kids. When Pierre de Coubertin re-created the Games it was about achieving those chances. We kept that part of the message to the front always."

Ah, de Coubertin. French, wasn't he? He made Paris the first real home of the modern Games.

Yesterday in Singapore was all more than a little surreal. The French defeat being shaped by de Coubertin was just a small part of it. It was a bizarre day. The sort of stuff that happens only in IOC-land.

The IOC gathered all day long in a ballroom perched above three stories of shopping mall. Taking their coffee breaks, the grandees of world sport could gaze down at people toting trays through the food court and women getting facials in the beauty centre.

In their turn, shoppers could stare up to the fourth floor and see the blazered panjandrums going about their business being pursued hither and tither by the massed and frenzied media.

All day long it went on and in the early evening it reached a frenzy. Young girls gathered on the balconies below, not to shop but to scream if they caught a glimpse of David Beckham. Bid delegates and journalists began straying through the shopping areas looking for respite and light snacks.

Not long after teatime a rumour swept the building that a verdict was prematurely imminent. There was a mass sprint for the escalator, cameramen moving backwards up the steps, journalists squeezing in beside lithe athletes and badged administrators.

Everyone fighting to get to the top and through the security screening first.

And then the escalator just stopped. It gave a little sigh and packed it in. Everyone was frozen in space, but not a smile from anyone. Just a pause, and then a grim and undignified melee as everyone elbowed their way on upwards.

Shoppers, down below in the real world, just gazed in bemusement. As a metaphor for the Olympic bidding process it was perfect.

London's stunning and unprecedentedly surprising win was down to their ability to keep sprinting to the top of the escalator when everyone paused at the end and looked down. They prevailed by four votes, but at times it was closer than that.

In the first round, just that many votes divided the campaigns of New York (19), Madrid (20), Paris (21) and London (22). Every bit of schmoozing, every deal, every presentation, every meeting counted in the end.

As the voting rounds proceeded the London team didn't know the figures but they knew that Moscow's early elimination meant some danger for them. They had known that whenever New York's bid was eliminated they would gain handsomely, but Juan Antonio Samaranch's links with the bids of Moscow and Madrid meant Madrid would pick up the heft of Moscow's discards.

So it was. Madrid won the second round of voting with 32 votes. London were five behind on 27. Paris had 25 and New York were out of the game with 16.

By now, in keeping with Jacques Chirac's culinary theming of the week, the Paris bid knew their goose was cooked and its liver was foie gras. New York was bumped and the three American IOC members were now permitted to vote. Sixteen New York votes came up for grabs too. Twelve of those 19 new votes plumped for London, giving the Brits a lead of six votes over Paris (who now had 33 votes) and eight votes over Madrid, who were now eliminated.

Paris picked up more votes (17) than London (15) in the final round, but it was all over anyway.

The Paris bid had come to Singapore with an advantage and had seen it slip away almost visibly as the hours passed. Given that their bid was technically better and physically more advanced than London's, it was a shocking defeat.

The factors? First. The Blairs from Number 10. Tony and Cherie horsewhipped Chirac. Blair was in Singapore for longer and he was in form. On Tuesday, the IOC members visited Government House and Blair worked the room feverishly. He had to leave Singapore at midnight on Tuesday for G8 duties, but he worked the opening ceremony with an equal vigour. "Hello again. It's me, Tony? From London?"

The London team reckoned Blair had between 55 and 60 one-on-ones with IOC members. Cherie had so many tea appointments with IOC wives she risked tannic poisoning. Blair charmed not just in English but also in fluent French.

For his part, Chirac did two walk-throughs,three waves and made a downbeat contribution to the final French presentation. IOC members reckon Blair's surprising impact had a direct effect on African IOC members and on two Asian IOC members.

Chirac's lacklustre performance echoed a theme on the floor and in the bars.

"Paris seemed to have about two good lobbyists," said one IOC member. "London had a dozen people working around the clock. New York were as good as you would expect them to be at it. It made a difference. The French were just uncomfortable with grovelling and dealing."

Second. Jacques Rogge, it is apparent, has become a lame duck IOC president. This is a pity, as he is an ethical and sensible man, but he lacks any redeeming touch of the Machiavelli. All week long in the corridors of the Raffles Convention Centre cruel comparisons were made between the jaded, ineffectual manner of the earnest man from le petite Belgique and the steely demeanour of the still vigorous old warhorse Samaranch.

Ostensibly neutral, Rogge yearned to deliver a French victory. He failed, and it is widely believed four key Scandinavian votes he had been promised just slipped away into the London camp. The French defeat will not be taken philosophically by the Francophile wing of the IOC movement. Rogge will suffer the backlash.

Third. Ego and vanity. The IOC said it wanted scaled-down bid campaigns. It wanted no celebrities. It demanded sensible bids that reduced the cost of the Olympics. Paris and Madrid obeyed to the letter. London splurged on all counts. The chuffed IOC members looked as if London had thrown them a surprise party because they were so special.

"Oh! Hey! You guys!"

And London struck on the right theme. Kiddies! Youth! They gave the IOC the chance to say, "Young people of east London, we luff you." No small thing.

You could feel it in the air. The IOC members were looking for a reason to give the Games to London, a bid which had made a lot of old men happy. As the presentations came, London just had to hold its head and play its cards right. The bid did more than that.

By lunchtime, as the IOC members digested the first three presentations of the day, it was conceded Paris had made the best showing so far; but, speaking privately, members felt the French had a little too much hubris, concentrating a tad too much on celebrating their city and not enough on emphasising the technical merits of their bid. M Chirac, wisely, it was felt, made a comparatively downbeat contribution to the show.

New York, with a face-saving appearance by Senator Hillary Clinton, was all about money and power. Too much so. 9/11 was a problem like an elephant in the parlour. Unignorable. New York seemed to want to stress that the Games would be regenerative, but feared that the reminder of the need to regenerate would bring back pictures of planes crashing into buildings.

Moscow, rightly anticipating the worldly nature of the New York bid, came on next and laid the innocent-aspirations-of-an-entire-people theme on thick. Young faces. Lots of pleas from the heart. Shedloads of sincerity. Russia was yearning. It sent the IOC members to lunch feeling fairly good about themselves.

No mean feat that. A pall of fatigue hung over the ballroom of the Raffles Convention Centre as the IOC members, some of them still a little too jetlagged for the early start and all of them exhausted and bruised from the enthusiastic embrace of rival lobbyists, looked relieved just to be allowed sit still for a few hours.

Occasionally their attention wandered and the odd delegate could be seen with head bowed, sending text messages under the table.

"Wer r u? Me at IOC. U 2? Yawn!!!"

The presentations weren't supposed to make a difference to a weary IOC.

"It is like a cv going for the job. The personal impression at the end will make a difference," said Rogge yesterday.

"In most cases, if anything, the presentation might be a negative," said Francisco Elizalde of the Philippines. "People have already made up their minds. The presentations are quite good, but something might bother a delegate."

They weren't supposed to make a difference, but they did. Just enough. The video portions of each presentation were similarly themed. Young people of every hue smiling on sunny days in city backdrops which seemed to be filled with trees and devoid of traffic. London laid it on heavier than all the others put together though. It worked.

Rania Elwani of Egypt, a former swimmer, the youngest IOC member and easily the most striking, was impressed anyway.

"The use of athletes and the use of youngsters in their presentation was important," she said. "I think that was a general feeling, not just me. Until the last moment it was hard to decide. We read a lot and have a lot of information. It's just in the final moments for people who are not very involved in the procedure that something hits home.

"For us athletes, we look at the technical points. We look at what athletes really want. Sebastien Coe said it was a bid for athletes and young people. It was a good point he made."

London's team had rounded up 30 such specimens of young person and transported them to Singapore. "Their families have come from every continent, they practise every religion and every sport," said Coe proudly during the presentation, as if wishing to reassure members that Britain would be competitive at transubstantiation by 2012.

Then there was video footage of young people. Mainly they were dreaming about 2012 and the things they would do with their multiracial, multidenominational friends.

And there was Seb Coe. Originally Coe was a problem for the London bid. Too much of him is naturally a stuffed-shirt Tory. Sensibly, they took him back a little and rethreaded him. He emerged in the last couple of months merely as an affable former athletic great. It worked.

And there was Sue Barker on video. There was Denise Lewis promising that in London every athlete would have a home crowd. More video. More kids. Ken Livingstone. Even more kids. Even more Seb Coe talking, this time about when he was a kid and John and Sheila Sherwood had brought Olympic medals back to his home town and he'd dreamed just like all the multi-everything kids from the east side of London.

London had a theme and they banged the IOC members over the head with it.

When it was over there were only two questions. Both of them came from Prince Albert of Monaco. They were about the English weather and the distance to the sailing venues in Weymouth. Prince Albert might not have been a French stooge but he made himself look like one.

The presentations finished with a splendid effort from Madrid, but interest levels had peaked with London. The whispering walls had it that they had done enough.

Last words to Livingstone, the erstwhile Red Ken, who now brings the world's greatest circus to his manor.

"News was coming through that we had won or lost. I said when I arrived that it would be about 55 votes we would get. It was close. For me, though, this is about the poorest part of Britain. That's what we are talking about. It is the chance to give billions of pounds to improving an area which has been left behind and neglected. They have the same chance as everyone now."

And for a second, as he looked at the handful of journalists who had surrounded him, it seemed as if he were about to cry.

"I'm going for a very large cognac," he said. "Very soon."

From de Coubertin to cognac. The French had their eyes wiped.

Olympic Games London 2012: How the vote was won

London led in all but one round of the Olympic voting.

In the first round of voting, London got 22 votes, Paris 21, Madrid 20, and New York 19. Moscow was eliminated with 15.

The second round saw New York eliminated with 16 votes, while Madrid got 32, London 27 and Paris 25.

Madrid was knocked out in the third round after getting 31 votes compared to London's 39 and 33 for Paris. London won the 2012 Games by 54 votes to 50.