Toronto’s bid for the 2015 Pan Am Games is in Copenhagen on the Ocassion of the Olympic Congress. This may be the final time the bid committee will have to lobby several of the PASO members that are in town for the event.
Saturday, the bid team led by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty rolled out a maple leaf covered red carpet (literally) at a Copenhagen Hotel to entertain and pitch their plans to many of the potential 42 voters who will cast their ballot in Guadalajara, Mexico next month.
Along with the Premier in attendance were Bid Chair David Peterson, President Jagoda Pike, COC President Michael Chambers, IOC Member Dick Pound, Minister of Sport Gary Lunn and other members of the team.
“We’re getting a pretty positive feel… but we’re working super-hard, we’re not taking anything for granted.”, Bid spokeperson Bob Richardson told GamesBids.com, “this is going to be a very tough competition.”
Richardson watched the 2016 Olympic bid election from Rio House on Friday and made some notes.
“Presentations are important – I think some bid cities learned that yesterday. We’re very focused on that and we’re making sure we’re going to do a good one.
“We just saw four performances, it makes you think about a whole bunch of things that you wouldn’t necessarily have thought of until you see somebody else doing it.
“This is about sport and you got to get your focus on that … that was reiterated and driven home here [in Copenhagen].”, he said, “the bid that won focused heavily on sport in their videos, heavily on sport throughout their piece.”
Toronto lost bids for both the 1996 and 2008 Olympic Games; Richardson was involved in the latter. Rio used their 2007 Pan Am Games as a stepping stone to this week’s Olympic bid win.
Is there any chance Toronto is going to do the same?
“Zero at this point, Z-E-R-O zero.”, Richardson said.
“Realistically, Toronto has not won a major sporting event in 70 years. Last time something came to our area was the Empire Games (the forerunner of the Commonwealth Games). We want to win a Games and we want to get the infrastructure built which is great for kids, communities and high-performance athletes. That’s our focus – we’ve got four weeks to go and that’s what we’re focused on.
“Seriously, if you’re thinking we’re going to compete for 2020 – there’s a ZERO chance of that happening. I can tell you as a guy who’s been involved and been COO of the Olympic bid – zero.”
Toronto Star reports that the Chair of Toronto’s 2008 Olympic bid John Bitove Jr. and Canadian Olympic Committee CEO Chris Rudge have differing opinions and discussed potential bids for 2020 or 2024.
The final vote between Toronto, Bogota and Lima will be November 6.
