2020: Madrid's day to surge

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Four years ago, the bid team for Rio de Janeiro's campaign for the 2016 Summer Games came here and unveiled The Map. It was so simple, so breathtakingly elegant, so powerful.  In a single stroke of unassailable logic, it showed it all: the Olympic Games had never been to South America.

Three months later, when the International Olympic Committee convened in Copenhagen to vote for the site of the 2016 Games, Rio rolled to a runaway win.

On Wednesday, the three candidates for the 2020 Summer Games -- Istanbul, Tokyo, Madrid -- took their chances for the first time before the full IOC, each hoping to generate the same sort of lightning that jolted Rio.

There was no vote Wednesday. That will come Sept. 7, at another all-members assembly in Buenos Aires. Instead, the idea Wednesday was, again, elemental -- to spark momentum and roll to Argentina.

All three candidates were judged to have performed well by the IOC members. But -- the clear surge Wednesday went to Madrid.

As Alejandro Blanco, the head of the Madrid 2020 bid had put it in a briefing Tuesday with a small group of reporters, "I hope people look into our eyes and see the true passion we have," and by all accounts that's exactly what happened -- the Madrid bid jolted by the appearance on stage of Crown Prince Felipe, who drew wide praise for his energy, enthusiasm and, moreover, elegance in simply telling the IOC, "Madrid 2020 makes sense."

Madrid had been thought by some -- who never did understand the dynamic -- to be lagging in this three-way race.  After Wednesday -- no way.

Then again, this is July. September is still two months away. And as Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., Spain's executive board member, cautioned, what happened Wednesday amounts in the vote column to, as he put it, "nada."

On hand Wednesday were 86 of the 100 members; a handful more are due in Thursday, when the six presidential contenders will make presentations and the IOC will also pick the site of the 2018 Youth Games from among Buenos Aires, Glasgow and Medellin, Colombia.

Some 530 accredited reporters and camera crews were also on the scene at the Beaulieu congress hall, up from 160 at the similar event four years ago. Seventy percent of the 530: Japanese.

There could be no single grand gesture Wednesday like The Map.

There's no geographical singularity at issue in the 2020 race like there was in 2016. Beyond that, the world has changed considerably in four years. Indeed, the dynamics of this race have changed profoundly over the last several weeks, tied to the fluidity of the situation in Turkey.

Once the three finalists were announced, the 2020 race has always been -- even before the unrest in Turkey -- in the first instance a referendum on Istanbul. Do the members want to continue the trend of going to "new horizons" -- say, Korea (Winter 2018) Brazil (Summer 2016), Russia (Winter 2014) China (Summer 2008)?

Implicit in such a move are big construction projects. Istanbul comes with a roughly $19 billion infrastructure bill.

Or does the IOC want to go to a more traditional venue, with lower capital costs? Tokyo, site of the 1964 Games, comes with a $4.9 infrastructure bill. Madrid, bidding for a third straight time -- and of course Barcelona played host to the 1992 Summer Olympics -- is stretching the envelope with a radically low $1.9 billion infrastructure tab. It's that low because, over the course of the prior two bids, pretty much everything there already got built.

For Istanbul, the direction Wednesday was clear. Despite everything, there of course remains  sentiment for the Turkish bid. For those members who might be leaning the Istanbul way -- the trick was to offer sufficient assurance, if not reassurance, that everything not only is would but would be OK, in time reassurance theoretically translating into votes.

This must be understood: in the complex domino-world of IOC bidding, a vote for Istanbul takes Doha and Qatar out of the running for the Olympics, perhaps for a generation, and it's abundantly plain there are those within the IOC who simply do not understand -- or who are outright threatened by -- the potential of the Qatari wealth.

All the presentations Wednesday were offered in closed session so word of what happened is, at best, reliable hearsay -- the IOC opting, despite vows of best-practices and good-governance transparency, not to make the show available on a closed-circuit feed to the nearby media room. During the Istanbul presentation itself, the protests and violence were only slightly mentioned. In the Q&A that immediately followed, the members offered no questions on the topic.

As the members mingled at the IOC coffee break immediately after, the buzz was whether Istanbul had just effected a most sophisticated move -- or not.

At the news conference that ensued thereafter, Ali Babacan, a deputy prime minister for economic and financial affairs, asserted that "non-violent peaceful protest is a very basic human right" and the government "has no problem with that" but does take issue with what he called "some illegal organizations … in the crowd." He also said, "Our police maybe made some mistakes."

On the matter of social media -- Turkish prime minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan has called Twitter a "menace" -- Babacan said, "We have to drive good policies, inclusive policies" but cautioned that government is concerned such new media is "not used for illegal purposes, it is not used for bad purposes."

How this jibes with free speech rights in a liberal democracy, of course, remains uncertain.

In a later interview, Babacan said, referring again to the protests, "It is very natural in any democracy, these things happen. Every incident is a good excuse to learn from, to upgrade our practices, whether it's about freedoms or fundamental rights or so forth. It's a changing country, we shouldn't forget that. It's a changing country, an evolving country, moving for better and better."

He also said that Erdogan -- who, according to most accounts, is the government voice that matters in Turkey -- would be in Buenos Aires: "He is going to be our chief." And he noted that Erdogan, before turning to politics, used to play soccer. The deputy noted of the prime minister, "He is very into sports."

The Japanese came next, unveiling a government-sponsored initiative dubbed "Sport for Tomorrow" comprised of overseas projects aimed at promoting the Olympic movement, the creation of a Japan-based international sports academy and support for the World Anti-Doping Agency.

What the Japanese have -- no problem -- is money. They have a $4.5 billion reserve fund, cash, sitting in the bank.

What they also can tout is security. "The other day my daughter lost her wallet," the Tokyo governor, Naoki Inose, said Tuesday. "It contained $600. The wallet came back. And it contained the cash in the wallet."

What's at issue is whether they can convey to the IOC the passion they assuredly feel, and in particular the way the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan have served as a catalyst for the bid, and indeed the entire country.

Takeda, proclaiming that Japan's "affected areas are now rising," said that by "maintaining your hopes and dreams, you can rise again," adding, "We can show the world … that is the power of sport … by giving them hopes and dreams through the power of sport, it is possible to rise up."

The Madrid team closed the day.

The Spanish capital would have to build only four new permanent venues and three temporary sites. In the world of Olympic bids, this is a novel approach, indeed. Because of the bids for 2012 and 2016, "The promises made then are today realities," Samaranch Jr. explained.

The Madrid bid was presented with but five questions from the IOC members. None dealt with the Spanish economy -- a notion perhaps unthinkable perhaps even six months ago.

"A realistic bid for realistic times," Blanco said at the news conference following their presentation. He also offered an extraordinarily fresh take that perhaps ought to be the new 21st-century template for what the Games should be: "Many years ago [the talk was of] the globalization of the Olympic movement," adding, "The true globalization comes today from television. The Games have to be a reality of the country, a reality of the world in which we live. Madrid presented a bid that is compact and a reality of the times in which we live."

On top of all that came the appearance on stage of the crown prince, the honorary Madrid 2020 president, an Olympian and Spain's flag-bearer at the 1992 Barcelona Games. One IOC member called the prince, who told the members he wanted Spain to again feel "promise and hope," the "star performer of the day."

"Whatever the goalposts were, he moved them," the member said.

Added Craig Reedie, the chairman of the IOC 2020 evaluation commission, emphasizing that he was observing, not endorsing, Madrid "lifted their game."

Two months now until the vote in Buenos Aires. Only one thing matters.

As Masato Mizuno, the Tokyo 2020 vice president and chief executive put it in a comment that could apply to all three bids, "We have to get more votes. We have to work hard from now until Sept. 7."

Tokyo 2020: "Hugely impressed" or lost in translation?

TOKYO -- There is no question, absolutely none, that Tokyo could put on the Summer Games in 2020. They have the technical know-how. They proved that here, again, this week. They're certain to get a good write-up when the International Olympic Committee's Evaluation Commission releases its formal report, in July.

"We have been hugely impressed by the quality of the bid preparations," the head of the commission, Britain's Sir Craig Reedie, told a jam-packed news conference Thursday, adding a moment later, "Across the board, it has been excellent in every way."

As always in Olympic bidding, for all the complexities, there are -- to paraphrase Sebastian Coe, who championed London's 2005 winning campaign and then served as London 2012 chairman -- only two questions, how and why.

Having manifestly established the how, the challenge now facing Tokyo before the IOC vote Sept. 7 -- Madrid and Istanbul are also in the 2020 race -- is the why.

Can Tokyo craft a compelling story?

History shows they know what to do when they get big events in Japan.

The 1998 Nagano Winter Games? The 2002 soccer World Cup, shared with Korea? The 2007 Osaka track and field world championships?

All successes.

And yet recent years have also seen a profound disconnect in Japanese bids for the Olympics.

In 2001, Osaka's bid for the 2008 Summer Games got six votes out of 112, out in the first round.

In 2009, Tokyo's bid for 2016 -- which scored high in the evaluation report -- had to scrimp for votes  to get out of the first round, just to save face. That helped knock Chicago, which got a mere 18 votes in Round One, out. Tokyo then promptly went out in Round Two, with just 20.

They decided after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northeastern Japan to bid for 2020.

Next week will mark the two-year anniversary of the disaster.

"Tokyo does not face a big issue of radiation -- that was explained," Tsunekazu Takeda, president of Tokyo 2020 and the Japanese Olympic Committee as well as the lone IOC member in Japan, said.

And saying that the water in Tokyo is clean enough to drink from the tap, which they made a point of doing to the evaluation commission -- that's not a story. That's just normal.

So what is the story?

At a gala dinner Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe started his remarks to the commission by saying, "Japan is an aging society; that's why we hope Tokyo will be chosen." With all due respect to the prime minister, the IOC is relentlessly seeking to appeal to a younger demographic. How does his observation help?

Thursday's wrap-up Tokyo 2020 news conference showcased bid officials and athletes, eight personalities in all. On stage, among others: Takeda; Masato Mizuno, the Tokyo 2020 chief executive and a JOC vice president; and Tokyo Gov. Naoki Inose.

There is a tendency here for sartorial conformity, the bid uniform a blue suit and white shirt. That monochromatic vision calls to mind the image the Pyeongchang bid team put forward in 2007 for 2014. Note: that bid did not win.

It was only when Pyeongchang injected more verve and dash in its clothes and its presentations -- and, not incidentally, switched almost entirely to speaking English, which the IOC moves mostly in now -- that it rolled to a landslide victory in 2011 for 2018.

Already some of the more sophisticated souls working on the Tokyo team have recognized the danger in the parallels to Pyeongchang's unsuccessful efforts -- because, too, the IOC would have to be convinced to come back to Asia in the summer of 2020 after being in Korea in the winter of 2018.

There were blue shirts on stage Thursday, not just white. And grey suits, not just blue. And Gov. Inose started the conference by saying, "I have really enjoyed this week," and he spoke in English.

To be plain, 2020 offers Tokyo a far better chance for victory than 2016.

There are only three cities in this 2020 race, not four as in 2016. And there's only one -- Istanbul -- that, like Rio, offers the IOC the expansionist strategy that has dominated recent bid contests.

Meanwhile, it's plain the issues around which the 2020 race will turn are, first, whether the IOC wants to keep heading toward new shores and, second, whether it wants another huge urban makeover construction project.

The strategy here -- and, in measure, in Madrid, too -- has to go like this:

Sochi, the 2014 Winter Games host, is already is known to cost more than $50 billion. Work is still not done.

Rio de Janeiro, the 2016 Summer Games site, is so bedeviled by delays that the IOC has been saying, albeit in IOC code, to hurry up with a multiplicity of projects. Time "is of the essence," the Brazilians were told when an IOC team was there just last month.

Istanbul's construction budget weighs in at $19.2 billion, and history has shown that figures provided in bid books tend to be understatements.

Madrid has yet to make its case to the evaluation commission; that four-day visit begins March 18.

Here, the venue plan calls for 28 of the 33 competition venues to be within five miles of the Olympic Village; the village would be built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay.

Though they have a $4.9 billion infrastructure budget, 40 percent of which will be directed for a make-over of the national stadium, they also have plenty in the bank, the money just sitting there, the commission heard.

Japan has a $5.9 trillion economy, the world's third-largest. Abe, moreover, has shown signs that he is willing to make market-opening changes that Japan has resisted for nearly 20 years.

If Tokyo were itself a country, the commission was told, its economy alone would almost make the top 10 in the world.

Even the Tokyo polling numbers are up: 70 percent of locals want the Games, an IOC survey disclosed. That's up from 47 percent last year.

Reflecting on the four days with the evaluation commission, the governor, still speaking in English, said, "I believe we have shown the best of Tokyo. All those assets that will underpin the smooth delivery of Tokyo 2020 -- for example, our exceptional transport infrastructure, our cutting-edge technology and the very high levels of safety and security in Tokyo."

That has the makings of a story: Tokyo as reliable, fun and interesting choice. Bring on the sushi. It just needs to be told, and votes asked for.

Unclear -- given history, personality and temperament -- is whether it can be done.

The governor, as he was wrapping up the news conference, suddenly found himself telling roughly 1,000 journalists about the work of the former Harvard professor and political scientist Samuel Huntington, who died in 2008, and Huntington's focus on the competing cultural identities in the world of perhaps seven or eight "civilizations." Japan, as the governor noted, is one.

"Because of the maturity of this civilization, we will have a situation where we can 'discover tomorrow,' " Inose said, now in Japanese, slipping in the bid's catchphrase.

"By 2020, we can show that to the world by hosting the Games."

In Tokyo, the risk is that the story -- the why -- keeps getting lost in translation. They have six months to try to figure it out.