Back in 1994, IOC member Dick Pound declared the only way Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games would lose to Quebec City was because Utah’s capital had “no more rabbits to pull out of the hat”. Yup, I know – bless Dick for thinking that’s how Olympic bids are won.
Working on more conventional lines, however, the Salt Lake City bid president and his senior vice-president shipped $1,200 worth of rabbits (trivia buffs may care to know that amounted to 12 rabbits) to Pound. Dick and his wife declined to accept the rabbits, though other IOC members were rather less circumspect about receiving certain deliveries/land deals/IOUs for full college tuition for their kids. Naturally, Salt Lake City did end up winning.
But let’s fast forward to the present day, where that episode has inspired two observations. The first is that the bottom really seems to have dropped out of the rabbit market. The second is that with just over seven months to go before the vote to award the 2024 summer Games, Olympicologists are apparently judging Paris to be slightly ahead of rival cities Budapest and Los Angeles. Consequently, the moment to appeal to the timeworn sensibilities of the International Olympic Committee is very much now.
Imagine the fury in France and Hungary, then, to learn that their chance to drop billions they don’t have on a cheat-corrupted security nightmare has been totally rabbited by the United States. The Donald Trump administration’s order to ban citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States is what’s known in the trade as IOC-nip.
On even the most basic level, it wouldn’t be an Olympics in Los Angeles if a load of countries didn’t show up. Admittedly, that diminished turnout was previously effected by means of a worldwide Great Depression (1932) and then a boycott (1984) – but presumably the Trump administration thought they’d achieve the same magic via other means. After all, I’ll bet they can’t even envisage a situation in which Russia wouldn’t attend in 2024.
I can. But that’s another column. The main point is that these days, nothing says “come and get it” to the IOC as enticingly as making like an autocracy. Unless your bid city binder contains thoughtful artist impressions of the various human rights abuses you will be enacting before, during and after your putative Games, then you have simply failed to look sufficiently modern to be in with a shout of hosting.
For the IOC – whose motto is Citius, Altius, Faustus – the news of an immigration ban should do nothing but burnish the standing of the Los Angeles bid. The city’s mayor may have accused Trump of “fanning the flames of hatred” – but one man’s flames of hatred are another’s flames of desire. The immigration ban is quite simply the clearest indication that Trump wants this Olympics since the telephone conversation he had with the IOC president, Thomas Bach, a few weeks after being elected. During that call, his team said he voiced his strong support for an LA Games (and presumably informed Bach in which events Trump would personally like to be taking gold.
Of course, the IOC is playing its cards close to its chest on the ban. As things stand, were an LA Games to happen tomorrow, any athletes from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen would be unable to enter the United States to compete – and you wouldn’t hold out much hope for the Olympic Refugee Team either, despite its much-praised debut in Rio.
But the IOC’s official statement on the ban is exquisitely brief: “The IOC does not comment on the politics of sovereign countries.” Aww – except you so do. You do it in the most eloquent and explicit way possible: every single time you award your corruption-enabling, reputation-laundering mega-event to places like China and Russia, despite brutal repression of democracy protests or anti-gay laws, or any of the other things that you’d think might be a no-no given the old “Olympic ideals”, but turn out not to meaningfully trouble either you or your sponsors in the event. You then do a masterful line in avoiding questions about it.
For some, the fact that Trump ordered the ban in the very week LA 2024 had been expected to submit its candidacy paperwork is judged a setback. We must envy their optimism but bear in mind idealism as far as the IOC goes is – almost without exception – misplaced. Look at the form book. Once you’ve awarded a Games to a guy who used them as a curtain raiser for an invasion of the Crimea, you’re probably able to live with the fact a Syrian butterfly swimmer is never going to see LAX.
Clearly the Paris bid would roar right back into pole position in the event of a Marine Le Pen victory in the French presidential elections. But barring that, it’s suddenly all looking like very much LA’s Olympic Games to lose.
