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John Crumpacker, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, April 18, 2002
April 18, 2002 - As the Bay Area tries to beat out New York, Houston and Washington, D. C., for the right to be the U.S. bid city for the 2012 Summer Olympics, local organizers are emphasizing the international popularity of San Francisco and the technological resources of Silicon Valley to the U.S. Olympic Committee.
In its 300-page addendum to its bid to the U.S. Olympic Committee, Bay Area organizers pointed to the region's generally mild summer weather as a boon to athletic performance, the cultural diversity of the area and a financial plan that takes advantage of existing sports venues while limiting the need for construction of new ones.
Ten years before the 2012 Games, 80 percent of the competition venues are in place, the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee said.
"If I could choose one place for the Olympic Games to be held, it would be San Francisco and the Bay Area," retired track star Michael Johnson, the newest addition to the Bay Area committee's board of directors, said at a news conference yesterday where the local strategy was spelled out.
"I travel around the world and compete in a lot of places," Johnson said. "After living here in the Bay Area for the last 1 1/2 years, I can say the community support and the organizing committee give the area a huge advantage."
One of those advantages is Johnson himself, who retired from competition last year and now lives in San Rafael. His heavyweight status in international sport (he has five Olympic gold medals and two individual world records) lends prestige to the Bay Area bid.
"He's an asset because he's a renowned figure in the Olympic world, whose opinion will be respected," said Bob Stiles, the committee's bid director.
Because of new restrictions on contact between bid cities and the International Olympic Committee after the 1998 Salt Lake City bribery scandal, the Bay Area committee said its strategy would be to involve the four U.S. members on the IOC as goodwill ambassadors to the world. They are USOC president Sandy Baldwin, IOC vice president Anita DeFrantz, former volleyball Olympian Bob Ctvrtlik and sports equipment manufacturer Jim Easton.
According to the bid addendum, their presence on the IOC "makes them the most valuable personal assets of the bid."
The USOC picks its nominee to host the games in November. The IOC will choose the winning city in 2005.
As a way of inviting the world to San Francisco months before the Games begin in July 2012, the Bay Area bid envisions an Olympic Way stretched out in promenade fashion along the Embarcadero featuring "houses" for each country in which cultural exchanges take place in a festive environment.
Chronicle staff writer Ilene Lelchuk contributed to this report. / E-mail John Crumpacker at jcrumpacker@sfchronicle.com.
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