Torch Lit by IOC, Crying Begins

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The International Olympic Committee’s decision to investigate all Olympic bid campaigns from 1996 on is proving to be quite the Pandora’s box, eliciting we-was-robbed howls from sore losers around the globe.

In Rome, Mayor Francesco Rutelli is calling for a new election to determine the host city for the 2004 Games and throwing out the results of the first, which was held in 1997 and had to be tainted, Rutelli reasons, because overwhelming favorite Rome lost to underdog--and centuries-old rival--Athens by a 25-vote margin.

In Berlin, Senate politician Judith Demba called the IOC a “club of corrupt old men” and dispatched an angry letter outlining IOC excesses during Berlin’s failed campaign to win the 2000 Games.

In Manchester, England, the president of another failed bid campaign for the 2000 Games said his committee was guilty of “gross hospitality” as it tried to woo IOC voters with such perks as hard-to-find tickets to Wimbledon tennis matches and England’s prestigious Football Assn. Cup soccer tournament.

There is no wrath like that of an Olympic bid city scorned, especially in light of recent evidence that Salt Lake City larded its landslide victory for the 2002 Games with outlandish gift-giving to IOC members, and Sydney might have bought the 2000 Games with election-eve payments to two African IOC voters totaling $70,000.

The 2004 vote is suspect as well, Rutelli claims, because Rome appeared to be a lock heading into the balloting here, only to get ambushed by Mediterranean neighbor Athens, 66-41.

“I’m very angry,” Rutelli told reporters Tuesday. “A panel of IOC experts and athletes gave Rome the No. 1 spot on the list of candidates. Until 24 hours before the vote, we were in the lead.

“And then . . . who knows what happened?”

Rome believed it had the election sewn up because it had the best facilities, the most experience with major international sporting events and--oh, the irony now--the best amenities for IOC members.

Rome’s Olympic plan featured an “Olympic family corridor” along Via Veneto in the city’s famed “La Dolce Vita” section, consisting of a row of five-star hotels to be cordoned off and isolated from the riffraff on the street and the ticket-buying commoners.

Athens, meanwhile, was still smarting from a can’t-lose loss to Atlanta for the Centennial Games of 1996 and was basing its 2004 bid on promises of still-to-be-built freeways, mass transit and looks-nice-on-paper sporting facilities.

Rome was a sure thing, Rome was convinced. And then on that fateful night in September, 1997, city officials looked on in stunned silence as IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced that the Games were going to Athens.

Two years later, a bribery scandal that has forced the resignation of three IOC members and the recommended expulsion of six others has fed Rome’s still-seething dissatisfaction with the election. Rutelli is now calling for a recount, a do-over, because, he says, “The most important thing is to remove every shadow of doubt about the decision.”

Neither Berlin nor Manchester made the final cut in the 1993 election for the 2000 Games, that final round going to Sydney and Beijing, Sydney then winning by two votes.

Berlin and Manchester spent outrageous sums to finish no better than No. 3. That was the hazard they accepted when they joined the competition; outrageous sums are no guarantee of winning votes. But the news of Sydney’s dumping “humanitarian gifts” of $35,000 apiece into the treasuries of two African national Olympic committees--and then winning by two votes--is apparently starting to chafe.

The Greens faction of the Berlin Senate has dispatched files detailing the city’s bid campaign to the IOC. According to Greens leader Demba, the Berlin bid committee spent $1.53 million on travel, lodging, car rentals and assorted other perks for 56 visiting IOC members--with numerous gifts exceeding the IOC’s then-self-imposed limit of $200.

In the letter sent along with the files, Demba claims the Berlin bid committee also:

* Paid “horrendous” medical bills for visiting IOC members.

* Organized a Berlin Philharmonic concert with the daughter of South Korean IOC Vice President Kim Un-Yong, one of three IOC members under investigation for possible improprieties during the 2002 campaign.

* Was sent a bill for $3,724 by Samaranch for a plane ticket between Stuttgart and Berlin, a domestic fare that normally costs less than $400.

Manchester spent $9 million on its losing campaign to host the 2000 Games.

Bob Scott, former head of the Manchester 2000 bid committee, says, “We were in the business of showing people around. We were in the business of entertaining. We were in the business of, you know, sort of gross hospitality. . . . I think we can be accused of [that].

“I don’t think it’s very different from winning any major contract. You put your best foot forward and that involves entertainment. You may think it stinks, but that’s the name of the game.”

Rome played the same game in 1997. Maybe it was out-perked, out-grafted by its crafty rival to the east, but either way, the president of Greece’s Hellenic Olympic Committee has issued a three-word challenge to Rome: Bring it on.

“The vote is closed,” Lambis Nikolaou said Tuesday. “The Games were given cleanly. The doors are open, the dogs are tied up. They can examine what they want.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this story.