What now, France?

DURBAN, South Africa -- Guy Drut, one of France's two International Olympic Committee members, called it a "very, very cold shower," and that was the headline all over Thursday's editions of the French newspaper Le Monde. L'Équipe, the French sports daily, offered up the "autopsy of a failure."

In the Tribune de Genève, which can be read not just in Geneva but in Annecy, the French town just down the road that got spanked in Wednesday's IOC vote, receiving just seven votes, it was, "Disappointed."

"We console ourselves as we can," L'Équipe said, and with all due respect, that's not it. Now is not the time for consolation.

Now is the time for a wholesale re-think of what is going on over there in France.

That's what's going on in the United States as the U.S. Olympic Committee tries to rebuild its financial and political relationships with the IOC.

And that's what is manifestly called for now in France.

If that's not obvious, every single person in position of leadership in French sport ought to be replaced.

There have now been four French bids for the Olympic Games in the past 14 years -- Lille for 2004, Paris for both 2008 and 2012 and, now, Annecy for 2018. By common reckoning, the French have spent a combined 130 million euros on the four bids, about $185 million at current exchange rates.

What do they have to show for it?

Absolutely nothing.

It's pretty plain that Annecy's performance here in Durban ranks at the bottom of any bid city's effort over the last 20 years. To recap it all is to wonder how a country that has so much going for it can get it all so very wrong:

From the start, the bid proved a complicated tangle between a national Olympic committee and the central government in Paris and the locals in the far-off mountains. Jean-Claude Killy, the French ski legend and acknowledged authority in IOC circles on Winter Games, kept his distance from the campaign; he would ultimately make only three live appearances on behalf of the bid, one here in Durban.

Moreover, and crucially, the bid was under-funded from the get-go.

Because of those funding concerns, bid chief Edgar Grospiron resigned last December. No one wanted the job. Entrepreneur Charles Beigbeder was finally convinced to take it. At that point, the technical plan was a mess. There was no narrative -- that is, no story about why anyone should want to vote for Annecy.

It proved remarkable how many times one heard bid officials mention the name "Annecy" once in a briefing and then go on to mention "the French Alps" thereafter.

A little brand-management, please. Frankly, the bid should always have been called "Chamonix." There's a name that's globally recognized and might have excited people.

For his part, Beigbeder was put in a hugely untenable position. On the one hand, he had to try to keep everyone around him motivated. On the other, he had to confront the reality he had inherited.

Reality check:

If the IOC vote had been held when Beigbeder took over, it's quite possible -- as even bid insiders now acknowledge -- Annecy might have gotten no votes.

From there, things did pick up. Well, some. The technical plan was improved. A creative team -- Lucien Boyer, Andrew Craig, Nick Varley, Dan Connolly -- developed a story and hammered it until journalists could recite it by heart. That's a good thing. It meant the team had done their job. The tagline: "an authentic Games in the heart of the mountains."

Even so, it remained clear Annecy still had no chance to win. The only issue was how many votes it could get. Like, double digits?

The French were counting on African votes -- in particular, Francophone votes -- to get there. As if.

If you know how the game works, it's quite possible the French got no African votes. There were those here who knew Francophone voters were still incredibly angry for promises made in 2005 in the course of the Paris 2012 campaign that they felt had never been fulfilled. No way were they going to be voting for Annecy now.

Here's the bottom line:

In general, as a country, France does have so much going for it. The French Olympic committee is not -- as is the USOC -- locked in a revenue dispute with the IOC. So, at a macro level, what's the problem?

That's what the re-think has to be about.

France has not been able, for instance, to take the momentum of the multiculturalism that was 1998 and the winning World Cup in Paris and translate that into a winning Olympic bid. Why is that?

The Annecy campaign? Not one person of color in any leadership position.

Moreover, France's Olympic bids keep getting stuck in some weird sense of entitlement rooted in the fact that Pierre de Coubertin was French, and de Coubertin is the man who in many ways got the modern Olympic movement going. Our French friends need to get over that. Like, now. Take soccer. Modern-day soccer has its roots in Britain. Did England win the 2018 World Cup because of that? Hardly.

Sorry to say this, too, but while the French did a much better job speaking English in the Annecy presentation Wednesday to the IOC -- about 40 percent of it was in English -- they need to ramp it up even more. They can like that, or not. But they have to accept it, or at least think long and hard about the consequences of not accepting it. The language of international business has become English and the language of the Olympic movement is, practically speaking, English.

Here is indisputable proof:

At every Games, the IOC makes available a database in both English and French to the thousands of writers and broadcasters from around the world. The usage stats from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics: 96.4 percent of the hits were in English, 3.6 percent in French.

In the first of their losing bids eight years ago, Pyeongchang's team spoke almost exclusively in Korean.

What the Koreans have learned and what the French now have to study is how to play to your audience. On Wednesday, Pyeongchang's 45-minute presentation went down almost entirely in English.

You'd like to think that in Beigbeder and in the French sports minister, Chantal Jouanno, the French now might have a team that has endured a brutal learning curve and could put what they've learned to use long-term. Because this has to be a long-term play.

Then again, given the French way, it's not clear how long Jouanno can stay in her position.

Just one more thing for them to think about.

This, too:

L'Équipe's two standout Olympic correspondents, Alain Lunzenfichter and Marc Chevrier, published a lengthy feature Thursday entitled, "Objective Paris 2024!"

It seems almost inevitable. They'll be lusting after those 2024 Games in Paris because they staged the 1924 Games there.

The IOC will pick the 2024 site in 2017. That gives the French six years to get their act together, as the story points out.

Just to be blunt: that 100-year thing is no guarantee of anything. Ask Athens. They lusted for 1996 after staging 1896. The 1996 Games went to Atlanta.

Carlos Nuzman, the 2016 Rio bid leader, now its chief organizer, held a casual briefing Thursday afternoon with some reporters.  Asked what he might suggest to his French friends, he said, "You need to evaluate a lot of things. You need to put on paper or [sit] around a round table. Maybe you will think and some momentum will come.

"It's very important to understand bids nowadays are different from the past. This is one special lesson."

Money, geography and a three-horse race

LONDON -- From the moment in December that Edgar Grospiron resigned, throwing Annecy's bid for the 2018 Winter Games into turmoil, it was never quite certain whether the campaign from the French Alps would ever again regain enough balance to again become a credible contender. At times, to be frank, it was like watching a train wreck. The Annecy bid stumbled along for weeks without a leader. Finally, Charles Beigbeder, a French entrepreneur, was convinced to take the job. Budget-wise, they've acknowledged many times since, they are running on the low side. They have struggled to cobble together a narrative.

On Thursday, however, here before the SportAccord convention of influential sports leaders from around the world, it all came together.

For arguably the first time, the Annecy campaign put together a coherent and credible pitch for a village-style Alpine Games: A  "bid from the mountains with the athletes for the future," with an emphasis on what they called an "authentic" Winter Games.

People noticed.

"It is a much better race than many in the IOC thought it would be six months ago," Craig Reedie, the British IOC executive board member who helped lead London's winning 2012 bid, said after watching Annecy's presentation, along with those from rivals Munich and Pyeongchang.

"The two front-runners," he said, "have developed extremely well."

And, Reedie said, "The improvement in Annecy is -- "and here he paused, searching for just the right word -- "marked."

Annecy's chances? There aren't even 100 days to go until the IOC's July 6 vote for 2018 in Durban, South Africa.

Does Annecy have enough on stage and screen to overcome the strong presentations from Munich and Pyeongchang?

The odds remain long, particularly because Annecy was yet again lacking again on Thursday the key element -- the in-person presence of Jean-Claude Killy, the superstar of French and Olympic winter sport, who appeared Thursday only in a short video?

Yet for Annecy -- indeed, for the IOC -- the issue has always been to make this 2018 derby a three-horse race, not just two.

"It's a three bid-city race. That's clear," Beigbeder asserted at a late afternoon news conference, adding a moment later, "They have to choose one, meaning the IOC, "and we have to make a difference."

Annecy went first Thursday. Then Munich. Then Pyeongchang.

No surprise, Munich's presentation proved robust. Following a strong presentation in March to the IOC's evaluation commission, the Munich team proved strong here in London, too.

The chair of the Munich bid, Katarina Witt, in a pinstriped black Strenesse coat-dress and stunningly high Michael Kors pumps, in her best breathy stage voice, kicked things off by unveiling the "vision" of a "festival of friendship in a setting that reveals the full possibilities of Olympic sustainability for all the world to see."

From there, the Munich team talked up money and geography.

Ian Robertson, BMW's head of marketing and sales, noted the Munich-based company now supports not only the bid but London 2012, the U.S Olympic Committee, national Olympic committees in France, Greece, China and several international sports federations. German business, he said, underwrites 50 percent of the revenues of the seven sports on the Winter Games program.

This winter, he said, Germany played host to 12 World Cup events and three world championships that attracted nearly one million spectators and a cumulative German television audience of over one billion viewers. "That's the kind of reach sponsors want," he said.

Back to Katarina for Munich's line of the day, and an unsaid but nonetheless obvious poke at Pyeongchang.

"… When you choose a host city for the Olympic Games -- Summer or Winter -- it is about more than just geography," she said, Pyeongchang touting "new horizons," the promise of taking the Winter Games to new markets in Asia.

She said, "It is about the kind of experience the athletes of the future should have," a suggestion that there might be a livelier place to spend 17 days in February -- say, Munich, one of the world's most interesting cities -- than, oh, Pyeongchang.

Which is why, the Koreans said as part of a powerful performance of their own, they've planned for a "Best of Korea" experience in Pyeongchang. Already, they said, they've signed up 39 companies with 120 brands -- world-class amenities, dining, shopping, entertainment and more.

You want to talk money?

The Koreans clearly had been anticipating the German strategy. Let's put it this way: if 50 percent of your portfolio rested in one stock, wouldn't you kinda want to diversify?

"We believe," Theresa Rah, the Pyeongchang director of communications, said from the stage, "that diversifying the financial support of winter sport from new markets makes sense for the winter sport industry, federations, the athletes and the Olympic and Paralympic movements."

By 2030, according to an Asian Development Bank Study, Asia will comprise 43 percent of worldwide consumption. From 1990 to 2008, the middle class in Asia grew by 30 percent, and spent an average of an additional $1.7 trillion annually. "No other region in the world even comes close," Rah said.

The South Korean sports and culture Minister, Byoung-gug Choung, announced Thursday that the government would invest $500 million to help promote winter sports and groom Korean athletes in a program dubbed "Drive the Dream" from 2012-2018.

Also in the works -- a $1.8 million plan to pay for visits from national Olympic committee officials from 2012-2017, and a $1.05 million plan for trips by international federation experts.

Completed in October, 2009: the Alpensia resort in Pyeongchang, at a cost of $1.4 billion.

You want to talk geography?

"The argument," Rah said, in front of a map of the world that showed the Winter Games having visited Asia only twice, both times in Japan, in 1972 and 1998, "really isn't about 'new versus old' or 'traditional markets versus new markets' or even clever metaphors about 'roots and new horizons.' No.

"The real decision is about maximizing the opportunity for winter sport for as many young people as possible, wherever they may be."

All of which surely made for Pyeongchang's counter-punch of the day.

But not the line of the day.

That went to the French sports minister, Chantal Jouanno, as part of an again-relevant Annecy bid.

"It is a great pleasure to be here in London," she said, "a city that in the sporting context has taught us French two things:

"That favorites don't always win," a reference to the 2012 contest. Paris was heavily favored to win. Instead, London did.

When the laughter in the hall died down, the minister, smiling, finished: "And that any bidding city must understand the challenges sport faces -- and offer a true global vision to resolve them."

--

Of special note:

The Korean presentation opened with Yang Ho Cho, the Pyeongchang 2018 chairman, saying:

"Before I begin, please allow me to send our deepest sympathies to the people and the [national Olympic committees] of both New Zealand and Japan.

"The world is with you, and we look forward to seeing your great teams in London next year."

Annecy -- it's a French thing

ANNECY, France -- The International Olympic Committee's 2018 evaluation commission headed out of town Saturday after declaring that this alpine town was indeed very pretty. "The International Olympic Committee's 2018 evaluation commission has been very pleased to spend time in this beautiful lakeside city, situated in a region where winter sports are so popular," the commission chairwoman, Sweden's Gunilla Lindberg, said at a news conference early Saturday evening as streaks of pink from a lovely sunset lit the western sky.

That is really what happened. And that is really what Lindberg said. It was masterful.

Anyone expecting substance in this context has never been to one of these evaluation commission news conferences, where it is spelled out early and repeatedly that the IOC discussion from the dais will revolve around matters technical, not political. Platitudes are both perfunctory and expected.

Beyond which -- in this case, it's fully in the IOC's interest to be as bland as possible to ensure that Annecy is depicted as a legitimate contender.

The IOC has had no trouble in recent years attracting Summer Games bids from all over the world. But Winter Games bids have been fewer. So a 2018 two-horse contest -- with only Munich and Pyeongchang, South Korea, remaining -- would ill serve the IOC.

Even so, the reality of Annecy's legitimacy is both far more complex and far more subtle, as France's sports minister, Chantal Jouanno, made clear in a wide-ranging roundtable conversation earlier Saturday with reporters.

To be plain:

The minister asserted emphatically that Annecy is in the race to win.

"What I think is we are now on the same line as the other candidatures," she said after a series of make-overs in recent months that have seen Charles Beigbeder take over for Edgar Grospiron as bid leader, a thorough revamping of the technical plan and other significant moves.

At the same time, she acknowledged the obvious: the Annecy bid has been grappling with any number of structural, cultural, political, financial, story-telling and other challenges.

In other words -- it's French.

There are obviously so many lovely things about France. Too, it is so easy to like being in the French Alps, and especially in Chamonix, one of the main hubs of the Annecy bid. And of course Chamonix is the site of the first Winter Games, in 1924.

At the same time, the whole France thing wasn't so great for the unsuccessful Paris Summer Games bid for 2008, or the unsuccessful Paris Summer Games bid for 2012. And now the Annecy 2018 bid has spotlighted again some of the very same problematic issues.

The Olympic movement, for instance, moves increasingly in English, in some ways almost exclusively in English. You can understand why the French would want to speak French. But if you have a message you want to communicate, wouldn't it make more sense to do so in a way that people hear you in the way you want -- indeed, need -- to be heard?

The Olympic bid process now runs to more than $50 million per campaign. If you're going to throw yourself into the game, why get in for $25 million? That's roughly the announced Annecy budget. Bluntly, that's just not enough, and that's what caused Grospiron to get out in December,  and Jean-Claude Killy to note here Friday -- unprompted -- that Grospiron had done a great job under the circumstances.

The bid process now relies heavily on international consultants. Admittedly, they are expensive. Are they worth it? Just to name two: Mike Lee helped Rio win the 2016 Summer Games. Jon Tibbs helped Sochi win the 2014 Winter Games.  Lee is working now for Pyeongchang, Tibbs for Munich. But Annecy went for long months without any international consultant, either to save money or on the belief that the French could surely figure out a French way to run a French campaign, or both.

"To a certain extent, what you're seeing with Annecy is these [French] institutions that are intelligent and well-meaning but there's so little space for some pushing out of the old and incorporating of the new," said Laurent Dubois, a Duke University professor and author of the recent book, Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France.

"The solution is going to have to be some French solution," Dubois said. "There's no reason to think they can't think of one. That's not to think they are going to have to accept what the U.S. or the British are doing. But the only way is for the younger generation to have a way in shaping what's going on."

Jouanno, who is among other things a 12-time French karate champion, took over as sports minister just last November. She is 41 years old.

Asked if she believed institutional issues were at the root of the ups and downs of Annecy's bid, she said, "This is just French character. We just like to have drama in what we are doing."

Even so, last month, she announced the formation of an "Assemblee du Sport" to review and develop French policy going forward, saying it would include representatives of the state, municipalities, business and sport. "One must admit that while society has changed, the organization of sport has changed very little," she was quoted as saying in the newspaper Le Monde.

Granted, the minister is new to her job -- but perhaps that marks the sort of smart thinking that should have been done well in advance of an Olympic campaign, not smack-dab in the middle of one.

Jouanno acknowledged serious thought was given late last year to withdrawing Annecy from the 2018 campaign. But millions of euros had already been spent. And, she said, "We would have been the only country resigning just six months before the end. This is not the sport spirit."

So now several changes have been made.

Beigbeder is on board. The technical plan has been re-worked. A number of Olympic athletes now play leadership roles on the Annecy 2018 team. Several key Annecy leaders move easily in English; Jouanno spoke mostly Saturday in English. A veteran international consultant, Andrew Craig, has been retained.

The budget, Jouanno said, still needs more cash.

Craig said, "Although there has been much talk about the Annecy bid being under-budgeted and so forth, the reality is it's human capital that wins bids and the human capital in the Annecy bid is now very, very strong."

As the IOC commission moves on -- next week to Pyeongchang, to Munich the first week in March -- the task in Annecy would now seem to be to figure out what story to tell, and how to tell it.

"We are not trying to put flash in your eyes, put stars in your eyes. We just want to show you our mountains," the minister said.

So simple, right?

As ever, though, this is France, so it gets made more complex and subtle. Perhaps the task is also to convince the voters that in fact the Annecy 2018 bid is not -- as some have suspected all along -- merely a stalking horse for the big prize, another Summer Games bid from Paris, or another French city.

Paris played host to the 1924 Summer Games. A bid to commemorate the 100th anniversary of those Games would be so very French, wouldn't it?

The minister was asked Saturday whether France would bid for the Summer Games if Annecy doesn't win out. Such an easy question to answer with a simple, "I don't know," or a, "We'll see." But this is France. Commend the minister at least her honesty:

"If we win the Winter Games of 2018 we won't be a candidate," she said. "If we don't win, probably.

"Because it has been too many times France didn't organize the Olympic Games."

Jean-Claude Killy meets the press

ANNECY, France -- Jean-Claude Killy met the press here Friday night, about 10 writers, most international reporters, a few locals. "We have come a long way," Killy said, referring to the Annecy bid for the 2018 Winter Games. To be emphatic: There is still a long way to go.

Indeed, perhaps a long, long way to go for Annecy, which by virtually all accounts started the International Olympic Committee's visit here this week in third place in a three-city race and almost surely ends the visit still looking up.

There are still five months to go before the IOC picks the 2018 site; Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Munich are the other two cities in the contest.

"I would say Annecy is back in the race," Killy asserted, and it's true: in five months anything can happen.

Now the question for the next five months: can Annecy 2018 make something happen?

Killy's comments late Friday capped a day of enormous symbolism that highlighted both the opportunity here and the real-world challenges the Annecy campaign must confront.

The opportunity:

The countryside is, in a word, magnificent. To see Mont Blanc and Chamonix on a day like Friday, when the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the brilliant blue sky, is to be reminded of a simple truth: it can be spectacular here.

The skiing is great. The food is great. The wine is great. The cheese -- it may well have been made by the gentleman standing behind the counter himself and he can tell you which cow you ought to thank.

Where else in the world do you find that combination?

Killy, at ease, penciled in for 20 minutes with the press, stayed for 30, the last couple devoted to the reading of a quote he attributed to the artist Paul Cézanne, the great 19th-century French post-impressionist, about the beauty of Lake Annecy, Killy saying he intends to read the words Saturday to the IOC committee as they prepare to depart:

"It is a temperate area. The surrounding hills are of a reasonable height, the lake, narrowed at this spot by two gorges, seems to lend itself to the linear exercises of young ladies."

"See," Killy said, letting the words settle, laughing, "everything in France ends with the love."

If only the Annecy 2018 bid committee could count on the IOC to be so tender.

To paraphrase the more modern American artist Bruce Springsteen -- the French had better start working harder for the IOC's love.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, flew down to this part of the country Friday to meet with the IOC commission. Sarkozy did not meet with reporters covering the IOC's visit.

But, according to an Associated Press account of a tourism and economics conference in La Clusaz, the proposed venue for the cross-country and Nordic combined events, Sarkozy said it would be tough to overcome Annecy's "extremely powerful" rivals.

Sarkozy said, "You have got a very good bid book. Your region is absolutely beautiful. You want to host those games. We are going to fight together to have them."

On the one hand, it's imperative for the bid that Sarkozy make his manners with the IOC over lunch and stump for Annecy 2018 at such conferences.

The IOC demands unqualified support from national governments. It wants to know, reasonably enough, if something goes wrong that the government -- of whatever country it is -- stands ready to guarantee the Olympic project's finances.

"Whether it's a plus or not it's a disaster if it doesn't happen," Killy observed later in the day, referring to such guarantees, which France has emphatically offered, adding, "It's going to happen in Korea, heavily, and in Germany, I am sure."

The challenge with Sarkozy may well be -- Sarkozy.

It is hardly forgotten within the IOC that in late March 2008 Sarkozy became the first world leader to suggest he might boycott the Beijing Olympics as a means of ratcheting up pressure on China over Tibet.

Ultimately, Sarkozy relented. He attended the epic ceremony.

Also not forgotten within the IOC: the tortured path the Beijing torch relay took through Paris in April, 2008, when the flame was extinguished several times, Chinese organizers canceling the last leg through the French capital as well as a stop at City Hall where a banner read, "Paris Defends Human Rights Everywhere in the World."

If it seems unfair to conflate free speech in Paris in 2008 with a bid in Annecy in 2011 for the Winter Games in the mountains in 2018 -- well, c'est la vie, right?

Which had to have been -- or surely should have been -- evident to anyone and everyone in France when the subject of an Annecy bid was undertaken in the first instance.

Compounding the challenge was the way the bid was initially drawn up, with way too many venues.

This past June, the IOC said, no, that's way too many venues. Come back with a different plan. A "black eye," Killy said, adding a moment later, "The bid started very poorly."

The new plan, centered on Annecy and Chamonix with the sliding sports at La Plagne, is better, he said. Credit for that, he said, is due Edgar Grospiron, the then-bid leader who resigned in December amid concerns the project was under-funded.

Killy said of Grospiron: "He did a wonderful job."

Such comments from Killy are powerful, indeed. Killy is not only a French ski legend but arguably the single most important winter-sports figure within Olympic circles, co-chair of the 1992 Albertville Games, the IOC's link to the 2006 Torino and 2014 Sochi Games. He knows sports, politics, business. He knows real when he sees it, and when he doesn't.

So his distance from the Annecy 2018 bid over the past months had been thoroughly obvious.

What, then, to read into his meeting Friday with the press? A rapprochement of sorts, certainly, with the 2018 effort.

But read into this what you will, Killy saying of Charles Beigbeder, the new bid leader, "I don't know him very well, I have seen him two days -- that's all."

Or this, Killy asked how much he expects to pitch in from here on in and answering, "I have my own business. I have Sochi for fun," laughing and adding, "I'm choosing my words properly. And I will help Annecy as much as I can, as much as I can, because I am from this region."

It will be spring soon, and the linear exercises of young ladies will commence in earnest along lovely Lake Annecy. And then summer, and an IOC vote July 6.

"There is no perfect bid," Killy said. "I have been in this business for 30 years.

"There is no perfect bid," he repeated. "The outcome is not known to no one."

Annecy 2018 -- now what?

From the very get-go, it seems, Annecy's bid for the 2018 Winter Games has been missing that certain something. At an introductory news conference at the Vancouver Olympics this past February, there up on the stage appeared a line-up of various French personalities and dignitaries. Except -- Jean-Claude Killy wasn't there.

Within Olympic circles, especially within Winter Games circles, Killy is the man. Not just in France. Worldwide. So for him not to be there -- that wasn't good.

The open secret is that it hasn't gone much better for Annecy ever since, and the resignation Sunday of Edgar Grospiron, the Annecy 2018 chief executive, would seem to threaten to plunge Annecy into thorough disarray -- except "disarray" would seem to assume there was ever "array" in the first instance, and in the case of the Annecy bid that assumption may well be unfounded.

The International Olympic Committee will pick the 2018 site in July. Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Munich, Germany, are also in the race.

It's in the IOC's interest to have as many viable candidates as possible in its bid campaigns. But it has been clear to everyone who knows the Olympic scene that Annecy's viability has always been suspect.

This past June, the IOC criticized Annecy's spread-out venues. The bid scrambled to come up with a new plan centered around Annecy and Chamonix.

Then, a few days ago, Killy and fellow French IOC member Guy Drut said Annecy was still way behind.

Such public criticism from your own country's IOC members is virtually unheard-of.  Especially from the likes of Killy -- 1968 Grenoble Games ski gold medalist, co-chair of the 1992 Albertville Games, IOC point man for the 2006 Torino and now 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

This past week, rumors flew that the Annecy bid was actually considering withdrawing from the race itself.

Imagine that. The founder of the modern Olympic movement, the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, is French. The two languages of the movement? English and French, and in case of dispute French wins. A French bid -- withdrawing? Unthinkable.

Strike that, since the only certainty in Olympic bidding is uncertainty, and there are eight long months to go before the IOC vote next July 6.

For that matter, who knows what kind of grades Annecy will get from the IOC's evaluation commission visit? The IOC team is due to visit in early February.

Clearly, the matter of whether to stay in seems like it was up for serious debate. A news release issued Sunday said that "following a very long session" the Annecy 2018 supervisory board "confirmed its ambition" to pursue a campaign "in view of the tremendous contribution it makes to promoting the region and endorsing Olympic values."

Anyone can see the potential in an Annecy campaign. It's a mature resort in one of the world's most beautiful spots, nestled in the Alps. What if Annecy could be transformed, the Games as catalyst, into a 21st-century resort that relies on cutting-edge and sustainable environmental technologies?

That whole global-warming thing? What's that going to do to the ski and snowboard industry? Shouldn't someone somewhere -- say, an already-developed resort such as Annecy -- be thinking out of the box about how to find a new way forward?

On Friday, the new French sports minister, Chantal Jouano, reportedly affirmed her support for the bid. On Sunday, the bid's budget, it was announced, would be increased from 18 million euros, about $23.7 million, to 20 million euros, about $26.4 million.

Bluntly, that's not enough. That's half, maybe a third, of what it might take.

The debate about whether Olympic bids should run to $50 million or more is a reasonable one, and it's worth having. But not if you're in the game. If you're in -- you're in.

The French, though, have tried to go it in what they might call a "modest" or "authentic" way. It makes you wonder who's really running things there, and whether he, she or they understand what it takes to win, and whether they're committed, or can find such a commitment.

It also makes you wonder whether someone in a position of serious responsibility in France is going to look at what is really a pretty modest increase in that bid budget and ask whether -- to use the American expression -- it's nonetheless a case of throwing good money after bad.

Does it serve the president of the French republic -- who, after all, is up for re-election in 2012, a year after the IOC vote -- for Annecy to get thumped?

How does it play for a potential Paris bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics -- a 100th anniversary bid of the 1924 Games -- if Annecy gets whacked?

What's the dynamic if, ultimately, Annecy withdraws? Can there be such a thing as a graceful withdrawal?

To be explicitly clear on one point: This is not about Grospiron, the 1992 Albertville Games moguls champion. He was fully committed. Grospiron has consistently proved the one bright spot in the bid -- a guy that everyone, and I mean everyone, in particular his rivals, not only liked but respected.

He said in a telephone interview late Sunday night, "I have done what I could do. It's like that."

Growing reflective, he said about his decision to step down, "I decided to be honest to myself and to others. Just to be honest. I learned that from sport. First of all, honesty and integrity. And integrity comes first to yourself. You can lie to everybody but if you lie to yourself that causes damage.

"Again, I learned that through sport. If you cheat yourself, it will have consequences. You can cheat others -- well, it doesn't matter. But when you lie to yourself, you cheat yourself, it's not good. And I wanted to be honest to myself and clear with others. And I took my responsibilities. I think this will help each one of us in the team and those on the [supervisory] board to take their responsibilities. We owe that to the Olympic movement."

He also said, "I did my best and it was not enough. It was not enough to have put us in a good position. I know there are probably guys who can do much better."

It says here -- probably not.

Again, this is not about Grospiron. This is about something much bigger. This is about France.

The IOC's week along the beach

ACAPULCO -- For a week, the Olympic world moved itself to the Fairmont Princess hotel along this resort's palm-strewn beaches. The indelible image:

Vlade Divac, the former NBA star who is now president of the Serbian Olympic Committee, taking to the sand after the meetings were done for the day, the sun creeping lower and lower in the west, to play beach volleyball.

Funny how everyone wanted to be on Vlade's team.

Inside, with Vlade very much in attendance, the Assn. of National Olympic Committees met -- the largest gathering of Olympic figures outside the Games themselves, with officials from more than 200 nations on hand. Amid dozens of presentations, ANOC re-elected as its president Mario Vazquez Raña, the Mexican media mogul and senior International Olympic Committee figure.

Moreover, ANOC convened a first-ever joint session with government sports ministers; some 100 showed up. ANOC held a joint session with the IOC's policy-making executive board. And then, finally, the IOC board wrapped it all up with a three-day meeting of its own.

The highlights:

-- Each of the three 2018 bid cities appeared before the ANOC assembly; these marked their first public presentations. Munich, with two-time Olympic figure skating champion Katarina Witt and polished videos, unveiled its "festival of friendship" while Pyeongchang, seeking to bring the Winter Games to Korea for the first time, promoted "new horizons" with indisputable government and business support.

The presentations by those two seemed to most a cut above that of the third city in the race, Annecy, France. But it would be foolish, particularly at this early stage, to count Annecy out. The IOC in recent years has shown a distinct preference for bids with a single figure the members want to do business with; the head of the Annecy bid is the eminently genuine Edgar Grospiron, himself a gold-medalist in freestyle skiing.

The IOC will make its 2018 choice next July at an all-delegates session in Durban, South Africa.

-- The IOC said it is "looking favorably" at the inclusion of women's ski jumping and several other events, among them the extreme sports favorite slopestyle, for the Sochi 2014 Games. But it stopped short of saying yes -- for now.

Instead, the IOC gave president Jacque Rogge the authority to say yes (or no) after the world championships this coming winter. The women's ski jumpers have been fighting for inclusion for years. In slopestyle, the competitors go through "features" such as rails and bumps.

The full under-consideration list of new events: women's ski jumping; ski slopestyle (men's and women's); snowboard slopestyle (men's and women's); ski halfpipe (men's and women's); biathlon mixed-team relay; figure-skating team event; luge team relay.

"They said they were favorably looking at the sport," the 2009 women's world ski jump champion, American Lindsey Van, said in a telephone interview from Park City, Utah.

"I have to think positively. They didn't say no. So we're headed in the right direction."

-- Sri Lanka's Olympic committee proposed that technology or laser shows could replace fireworks at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer and Winter Games, citing environmental concerns.

Rogge said the IOC would review the issue. He also said it would be considered "seriously."

The likelihood of fireworks going away from the Olympic scene seems improbable. The gala banquet that Señor and Señora Vazquez Raña threw here for ANOC delegates, for instance, was preceded by a beach-side fireworks show.

Improbable, however, is not impossible. It used to be that live doves, symbolizing peace, were released as part of the opening ceremony. That was until a bunch of doves got cooked by the cauldron at the 1988 Seoul Games. Now the doves are featured symbolically -- and sometimes memorably indeed, as was the case with the stylization by acrobats at the Torino 2006 Winter Games.

-- Vazquez Raña was elected by acclaim to another four-year term as ANOC president. ANOC gets a representative on the IOC executive board. That's now Vazquez Raña. He turns 80 in two years. That creates a conflict with IOC age-limit rules that say that's when he has to step down as IOC member, and thus from the executive board.

The IOC adopted those age-limit rules as part of its response to the Salt Lake City corruption scandal some 10 years ago. The Vazquez Raña case thus promises to make for an intriguing test of the IOC's commitment to those reforms. Unclear is how, if at all, the FIFA bid scandal -- and the closer look at governance issues it surely will prompt in many Olympic and international sports offices -- may affect Vazquez Raña's status.

Rogge said the executive board will study the issue. A decision is likely in 2011.

-- At the news conference wrapping up the week, Rogge urged FIFA to follow the same sort of path the IOC did in the wake of the Salt Lake scandal.

Rogge said FIFA president Sepp Blatter "was so kind to call me" to discuss vote-buying allegations in the race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, the IOC president adding he suggested that Blatter "do exactly what he has done and try to clean out as much as possible."

The IOC ended up ousting 10 members and enacting a 50-point reform plan amid allegations of offers of cash and other inducements linked to Salt Lake's winning 1995 bid for the 2002 Winter Games. Asked if he could be sure the IOC was not itself now in line for another major corruption case, Rogge responded, "Could it happen to the IOC? I hope not. I believe the rules we put into place protect us as much as possible. But you can never say never in life. Cheating is embedded in human nature."

Ultimately, the import of these Acapulco meetings may prove to be the joint session with government ministers. It was a coup for Vazquez Raña to get so many here and while little constructive came out of this first give-and-take -- despite the fact that the speech-making ran on for 11 hours -- little was expected.

A next logical step, much discussed in the open-air bar of the Fairmont:

The possibility of convening a working group to draft a code of conduct for both sides, government and sports officials. Sports officials want government to contribute resource, primarily financial. It's entirely reasonable for governments to know where those funds might be going and then spent. Unclear, however, is whether misconduct -- whatever that might be -- should or could lead to sanction.

For now, just getting together -- sports and government -- makes for an entry in the history books.

In its way -- like seeing Vlade patrol the net.

--

This column appeared first on the AIPS website. That site is full of useful and interesting stuff, including reports from around the world you can't find anywhere else. AIPS, founded in 1924, is the international sports press association.

One down, nine to go, lots to talk about

ACAPULCO -- One presentation down. As many as nine more to go, concluding with the International Olympic Committee's vote next July for the 2018 Games. Munich unquestionably had the best videos here Thursday. It's why they were widely perceived to be the winners in Thursday's initial presentations, with Pyeongchang slightly behind and Annecy farther back.

One presentation hardly makes for an Olympic victory, however. As the bid teams regrouped here Friday, and as officials from the more than 200 national Olympic committees on hand dissected what they'd seen the day before, discussion turned to key issues that were not explored Thursday in detail but may yet prove pivotal.

Here are reports of what they were talking about:

Pyeongchang

Vancouver in 2010. Torino in 2006. Salt Lake City in 2002.

Those are big cities, not winter hamlets like Lillehammer, the Norwegian town that played host to the Winter Games in 1994. And so the IOC's Winter Games trend in recent years is clear, driven by the obvious: Seventeen days is a long time in a little place. In a big city there's more to do around the Olympic action.

Sochi, Russia, site of the 2014 Games, is not small, either. The city itself counts about 400,000 people.

Pyeongchang would mark a departure. The population of the town itself is somewhere about 75,000 people, the president of the Korean Olympic Committee, Yong Sung Park, said Friday at a breakfast for selected reporters, and that estimate may be generous.

That's why the construction of a high-speed rail line linking Seoul and Pyeongchang is so intriguing; it addresses what could be seen as a significant weakness in the Korean bid.

The project is being developed apart from the 2018 bid; construction is likely to begin in a few months, the line to Pyeongchang done by 2017.

Typically, such so-called "technical" matters are of interest only to the experts who study them. In this instance, though, the train could be a game-changer, because you could go from Seoul to Pyeongchang, about 120 miles, in 50 minutes, according to material supplied by the 2018 bid committee.

That's more or less how much time it took each day to commute from Darling Harbor in central Sydney out to the Olympic precinct for the 2000 Summer Games.

You could, for instance, stay in Pyeongchang and get to Seoul, which is as interesting as any city anywhere, in about half the time it took this past February to get from downtown Vancouver up to the alpine events in Whistler.

Or you could stay in Seoul and commute to the action in Pyeongchang.

Not everyone, of course, is going to want to ride the train.

Thus the additional suggestion at Thursday's presentation to, in effect, bring Seoul to Pyeongchang -- communications director Theresa Rah, speaking from the lectern, describing it as a "Best of Korea" experience, with "world-class restaurants boutiques, shopping malls and entertainment options."

She added a moment later, "Imagine the excitement of the Winter Games, the beauty of the Orient and the best of what Korea has to offer, all together in Pyeongchang."

Details are far from complete, bid chairman and chief executive Yang Ho Cho said at the day-after breakfast. Asked by one reporter to name chefs who might be on hand in 2018, Cho said with a smile that he had no idea. If Pyeongchang wins, he said, "We have a concept and an idea and to implement it we have lots of time."

Annecy

There's another Olympic bid trend that often gets overlooked but in recent ballots has proven central to the balloting.

The IOC repeatedly has voted for a particular individual that the members obviously like, respect and want to be partners with.

Examples are numerous: Athens won in 1997 for 2004, for instance, because of the personality of Gianna Angelopoulos.

The trend for the last four elections is clear: John Furlong for Vancouver 2010. Seb Coe for London 2012. Dmitry Chernyshenko (and Vladimir Putin!) for Sochi 2014. Carlos Nuzman for Rio 2016.

The strength of the Annecy bid is chief executive Edgar Grospiron.

The point of the Annecy presentation Thursday was to introduce Grospiron -- and to give him the endorsement (via video) of Jean-Claude Killy, the French ski legend and IOC Winter Games operations expert.

Next:

Grospiron, in interviews, indisputably has proven he gets the vision thing. Can he and the French turn it into a compelling narrative?

For instance, France has played host to the Winter Games in 1924, 1968 and 1992.  It would only be natural to position Annecy as the 21st century extension of that legacy, wouldn't it?

"It's a continuing story between France and Olympism," Grospiron said of the three prior Winter Games, in Chamonix, Grenoble and Albertville.

"What's interesting now is that Olympism doesn't need France to exist. But France needs Olympism to be able to develop its sporting activity, to reinforce that."

Another, perhaps related, possibility: Annecy could also position itself, he said, as a forward-thinking bid that aims to use the Games as a catalyst to take on such challenges as global warming -- that is, the effect of climate change on already-mature ski and snow resorts forced to deal with, say, diminishing snowfall.

"This land is what we have," he said, calling the region in and around Annecy and Chamonix "most beautiful and most precious."

He said, "Our responsibility is to modernize and at the same time to preserve our values -- or its values, its traditions, its authenticity, its environment.

"That's the vision that I have … to integrate harmoniously the Games between the eternal snows of Mont Blanc and the crystal-clear waters of Lake Annecy. That's our main issue."

Munich

The 1972 Summer Games will forever be remembered for the kidnappings and murders of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

There's no point tiptoeing around it. It happened. It's part of the story of the Olympics and Munich.

"We knew from the beginning that this could be our biggest problem," the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, said in an interview, speaking in English.

"Therefore we had a lot of talks with members of other national Olympic committees. I spoke about this in Athens in 2004 with a lot of representatives of the Olympic family, especially with the members of the Israeli delegation. The surprising answer -- surprising for me personally -- was that '72 was the first attack of international terrorism on the Olympic family. This could happen in the United States, in Great Britain, in Spain, in Russia, everywhere. It's not the responsibility of the location where the international terrorists have made an attack.

"That," he continued, "was not only the opinion of one or two -- the president and general secretary of the NOC of Israel but also the opinion of other members and of other countries. I spoke with the NOC of Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Russia. They all said the same. This was not the responsibility of the location where it happened. It was the responsibility of the international terrorists who attack also in other continents and other countries.

"Especially the Israeli delegation and the Jewish members in other countries said two important things that encouraged us. First, the security standard in Germany is very high now, especially in Bavaria and Munich. About Munich, I say it as a Social Democrat, and the Free State of Bavaria has a conservative government, so it's not self-promoting: I have to accept that the security standard in Bavaria is very high. Munich is the city -- of all cities in Europe with more than one million inhabitants -- with the lowest crime rate. Year to year we get new evidence that the security standard in Munich is the best in all cities of this size.

"The second thing is that in the time of my office," 17 years and counting, "we have a re-birth of Jewish people and the Jewish religion and Jewish life in Munich. Some years ago we opened the new synagogue in the middle of the city. The new Jewish school and the new Jewish center with a restaurant and so on -- it is the biggest new Jewish center in Europe. We have guests from Israel, from the States, from everywhere in the world -- they accept the rebirth of Jewish life and that Jewish people feel in Munich at home. You couldn't imagine it some decades before.

"Therefore we believe it's not only our opinion. We ask the Jewish community worldwide: is it," meaning 1972, "a problem? If it's a problem, we make no bid. They all say it is no problem and they say one sentence more: Munich should get a second chance."

Three-city field, two-city race?

ACAPULCO --  The vote for the 2018 Winter Games is still some nine months away.  But is the race already tilting toward a two-city race in a three-city field? In presentations Thursday to officials from all 205 national Olympic committees, Pyeongchang and Munich, the South Korean and German candidates, articulated distinct visions. Those two would seem to offer the International Olympic Committee a clear choice when it votes next July.

Munich wants to throw a "festival of friendship," a traditional alpine celebration with the bang of a big street party.

Pyeongchang, bidding for the third straight time, unveiled a theme it called "new horizons," a call to the IOC to fulfill the mandate of taking the Games to every corner of the world.

Pyeongchang's vision is perhaps more profound. It falls neatly in line with the IOC's recent moves to Beijing (2008), Sochi (2014) and Rio de Janeiro (2016).

Then again, Munich has Katarina Witt, the two-time Olympic figure skating champion. It's impossible to know whether it ultimately makes a difference but let it be said, and directly: Katarina Witt exudes sex appeal.

She knows it. Everyone around her knows it. To ignore that is to ignore a salient feature of the Munich bid.

Everyone in the room listening to her Thursday at the lectern, when she was talking about celebrating winter sport "very passionately," when she said Munich's goal is to "lift the Winter Games to a new level of global excitement" -- everyone gets that the project has allure because she so obviously does.

Katarina Witt wore a two-tone grey-on-grey sheath dress Thursday from the American designer Nicole Miller, and four-inch pumps from the premium Swiss shoe label Navyboot, and you can bet that after the presentations the TV camera crews had eyes only for Katarina.

As ever, she played it cool. All business. She said afterward that it was thrilling to finally be able to go public with the presentations, that it finally affords those interested "the pictures in your head about what they could expect."

At some point -- not here, not now, it's way too early in the game -- the Koreans will counter with Yu-Na Kim, the Vancouver 2010 figure skating gold medalist.

At that point, the race will sharpen further. Next year.

Oh, and then there's Annecy, France -- the third entrant in the 2018 race.

There are some features to the revamped Annecy plan that are truly intriguing -- a "square of nations," for instance, a celebratory Games-times plaza. And bid leader Edgar Grospiron is one of the most decent, genuine guys anywhere.

Even so, it is an enduring mystery why the French -- just as they did in the 2005 race for the 2012 Summer Games, won by London -- seem to keep having difficulty sounding the right tone in these Olympic bid contests.

For instance, every bid-city presentation includes videos. The Annecy presentation on Thursday began with a video that included shots of Grospiron getting dressed, putting on a white shirt, tugging up his pants.

This reminder from the creative department: there is a fine line between being artistic and having a great many people in the room go, what?!

Following that video, the French line-up of speakers Thursday included Pernilla Wiberg, the great alpine ski champion (three Olympic medals, two gold) and former IOC member.

She's not French. She's from Sweden.

What?

Then came another video, this one from Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the First Lady of France. Why not her husband, the president of the republic?

What?

The Munich presentation featured a video of German chancellor Angela Merkel. The recently elected governor of Gangwon province in Korea, Gwangjae Lee, appeared here Thursday in person, even speaking in English.

Was Carla Bruni-Sarkozy -- who spoke in French -- featured on Thursday's video because she is herself a former model? Or was it she and not her husband because he was the one who in early 2008 was the first European leader to raise the possibility of not attending the opening ceremonies that August in Beijing?

Within the IOC, they tend to remember those kinds of things. And the rough going the torch relay had in Paris in the spring of 2008 too.

Grospiron, asked after the presentation about Sarkozy, said, "You can be sure he is behind us," meaning fully supportive.

If Annecy has challenges, it's only fair to note that the other two surely do, too.

There's talk within Olympic circles of a push to take the Summer Games back to Europe in 2020 (say, Rome). The 2022 Winter Games, too (say, 2022, St. Moritz, Switzerland).

There are currently four Italian and five Swiss IOC members. The IOC votes through secret ballot, and so it's fruitless to try to divine whether any or all of those nine, for instance, might see the benefit in going to Asia in 2018 and then coming back to Europe thereafter.

Then again, it's not difficult to figure out that nine votes would give you an excellent head start on the 55 or so you might need to win.

The Munich effort must also contend with the presumed 2013 IOC presidential candidacy of Thomas Bach, the leader of the German Olympic Committee and an IOC vice president. Would the IOC give the Games to Munich in 2011 and then two years later turn right around and elect Bach, too?

"I hear different theories," the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, said Thursday in an interview.

"It's a wonderful situation for Munich to have a representative of the bid who is so well-known and popular in the IOC. Of course, there is another opinion which says he wants to become president and he has a difficult situation …

"I only see that he is supporting the bid with all his power and influence, and we enjoy it."

As for Pyeongchang: Two times already it has come up short, losing 2010 to Vancouver and then 2014 to Vladimir Putin and Sochi. Can it finally get over the hump?

This 2018 bid would seem markedly different from before -- no references to politics or reunification on the Korean peninsula, for instance. This bid also features unquestionable governmental and heavyweight business support.

Will that be enough? If it's not, is it fair to ask what combination of elements and timing would ever be enough to make a Winter Games bid from Korea "enough"?

The only certainty in an Olympic bid contest, as ever, is uncertainty.

Well, and this -- in the next few moths, the so-called "Olympic family" will surely be seeing a lot of Katarina Witt.