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The sound of many packets of Zantac being opened you hear is the sound coming from the NYC 2012 Olympic bid team. The International Olympic Committee is reviewing the NYC - and London - bids to see if, as the NY Times puts it, organizers "overstepped ethical bounds by making late offers of financial incentives to athletes and sports federations involved in the 2012 Games." Dunh dunh dunh! The Mayor, along with others on the NYC 2012 team, presented the NYC bid in Berlin, promising free marketing, office space, you name it, if the Olympics came to NYC. The problem is that these new incentives were presented after the official bids were submitted months ago, and that's against the rules. The NY Times reports that the London team "offered free airfare, restaurant discounts and other perks to Olympic athletes and team offcials." Both NYC's and London's Olympic bid teams claim their bids submitted in November refer to these perks, except now they happen to be more fleshed out. Hmm. Gothamist suspects that Paris might come out ahead, considering that Spain hosted the Olympics in 1992 and Moscow in 1980.
Some other potentially bad and annoying news for the NYC Olympic bid: The state might take longer to review the West Side Stadium bid, one of the cornerstones in the city's Olympic plan, because of all the litigation. Here's the city's Olympic bid site. And Gothamist on the NYC 2012 bid and how New Yorkers are kinda meh about having the Olympics here (but keep in mind New Yorkers can be meh about a lot of stuff).
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you totally got me thinking of here comes the hotstepper by ini kamoze.
someone needs to compose an olympic song to that tune now.
I was thinking of Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories on Chappelle's Show, when he says that Rick James was a habitual line stepper.
Reading the earlier post on New Yorkers' relatively low support for the Olympics -- remember, that polling question did not weigh trade-offs. New Yorkers are not ambivalent about the West Side stadium itself, it is strongly opposed, 2 to 1.
You often see it said that politicians are afraid to oppose the stadium to avoid jeopardizing the Olympics bid -- but how many New Yorkers do they think would still want the Olympics if it's made clear that it requires building the stadium?
An even better question: how many New Yorkers would be disappointed if we don't get it? I imagine just about none -- this thing will be the Republican Convention on steroids! Are we supposed to get out of town for the whole summer or what?
Yeah, I guess we should just make New York a sleepy farming town -- don't want any hussle and bussle in NYC right Peter. This is a metropolis, if people don't want conventions, traffic and crowds they should really consider moving to the suburbs.
I love the olympics and the idea of getting to attend one without traveling is very exciting. However, I agree with Peter Feld's comments; based upon the lockdown/stormtrooper tactics employed during the republican convention, I want no part of them here in NYC.
As they say in Fiddler on the Roof: May God bless and keep the Olympics - far away from us.
Awww. Poor New Yorkers. Too good the for the Olympics. Too much hassle. Waaaahhh.
New Yorkers are the most inconvenienced people on the planet. From street fairs to marathons to random parades, there's always something going in this city which is an annoyance. But the benefits outweigh the cost.
The same is true with the Olympics. It's just two weeks! And it's only the greatest event in the world. If you really can't bear it, then leave town and rent out your apartment for 6 times its value.