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Overview
The Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee (BASOC) has selected the last week of July and the first week of August for the 2012 Olympic Games, specifically July 27 to August 12, 2012.
This period is ideal for hosting the Olympic Games in the San Francisco Bay Area. The weather conditions are excellent in late July and early August, with moderate temperatures during the days, lots of sunshine, cooling breezes in the evenings, and virtually no chance of rain. Further, with summer holidays across the nation and most of the Northern Hemisphere, visitors will able to attend the Olympic Games in record numbers, and children can attend without disrupting school programs. This period also allows BASOC to stage the Paralympics before schools and facilities gear up for the Fall season.
The detailed Official Program of the Games of the XXX Olympiad addresses all the requirements and recommendations of the International Federations, along with a careful review of the programs of both the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. It reflects careful consideration to balancing the number of medals awarded on a daily basis, to distributing transportation system requirements, and to impacts from competitions in neighboring venues. The session schedules also demonstrate consideration for national and international broadcast needs.
Sports Organization and Venues
The San Francisco Bay Area is blessed with extraordinary sports facilities, including two professional arenas and two professional stadiums, and two major convention centers, along with numerous smaller convention centers, arenas and major collegiate stadiums. These facilities are regularly renovated and improved to maintain their state-of-the-art readiness to host major sporting events. In fact, the San Francisco Bay Area currently has more than enough indoor facilities to host the Olympic Games in 2012 with several fine facilities in reserve, in addition to some major projects under consideration (and not included in this bid), such as a potential professional arena and professional stadium in San Francisco.
With this infrastructure already in place, BASOC can also focus on providing new venues for only those Olympic sports that have specialized needs that are not yet met in the region. Therefore, BASOC is developing partnerships throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to establish facilities for equestrian, track cycling, tennis, shooting, and a year-round
slalom course for canoeing and kayaking. Working on the principle of 'Legacy Now,' BASOC is proving to be a catalyst to get these much-needed facilities developed so that these sports can enjoy world-class competition venues, now and for the Olympic Games. Further, with this infrastructure in place, BASOC can assure the Olympic Movement that environmental impacts involved in delivering the venues for the 2012 Olympic Games will be minimal.
The Venue Plan
BASOC has clustered the venues in Olympic Activity Centers, including Stanford University, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and Sacramento. BASOC believes that with clustered venues, officials and Olympic Family members, media, and spectators can enjoy attending multiple events in close proximity to one another, but at the same time, the problems that often arise with transportation systems and over-crowding are avoided. Also, BASOC has partnered with its anchor cities so that each of these great metropolises and their residents can participate in the organization and staging of the Olympic Games and provide an Olympic Celebration that the largest possible audience can enjoy. The Host City of San Francisco will have the highest number of competition venues, but each of the anchor cities has major events to 'call its own.'
Over 300 Olympians live in the San Francisco Bay Area today, representing Olympic Games from 1936 to 2000. Beyond its Olympians, the region boasts outstanding coaches, officials and competitors in every Olympic sport. From the beginning, the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee (BASOC) has used this wealth of skill and experience to inform its plans for sports and venues in this bid for the 2012 Olympic Games.
A committee of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) represents each sport on the program, led by an Olympian in most cases but always by an expert in that sport. Added to this base of knowledge, BASOC assembled highly experienced Olympic venue planners and HOK Sport, the architects who designed Pacific Bell Park and Olympic Stadium in Sydney, so that the lessons from past Olympic Games have been applied. This group of athletes, planners, and architects has selected venues that will provide superior conditions for the competition while providing sensible and functional solutions at the same time.
By beginning with SMEs, BASOC has developed plans that the National Governing Bodies (NGBs) for each Olympic Sport have universally approved. The foundation upon which to present the best competitions ever staged for the Olympic Games is built solidly on Olympians, people who know best what must be done and who can marshal the human resources in their sport necessary to meet the highest standards.
For more information on the Official Program, Sports or Sports Organization:
Contact Bob Stiles, BASOC Bid Director at stilesops1@email.msn.com.
For media inquiries, please contact Tony Winnicker, BASOC, 650-856-2234 or 415-305-5617/ winnicker@yahoo.com or Kim Braun, Ketchum Communications, 415-984-2282/ kim.braun@ketchum.com.
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