Oly bigs: City still Game

Say race remains tight

BY MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU

The city's bid for the 2012 Olympics not only has new life - it has as good a chance as any of the five finalists, the Olympics czar said yesterday.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge predicted that when the host city is selected by secret ballot on July 6, the voting will be tight.

"There is no big gap between the bidding cities," Rogge told the French daily Le Monde yesterday.

"Maybe there will be a difference of half a dozen votes."

The city's Olympic leaders formally notified the IOC yesterday that New York will submit a revised plan to build an Olympic stadium in Queens, a stunning reversal from a week ago, when the city's bid for the 2012 Games nearly collapsed.

Mayor Bloomberg plans to travel to Africa this week for an Olympics conference and next month will lead a delegation to Singapore, where the 115-member IOC will select the host city.

Late Sunday, Bloomberg unveiled plans to build a new stadium for the Mets that will be converted into an Olympic stadium, if New York wins the Games. The announcement came six days after a state panel nixed a proposed West Side stadium.

"We are moving forward with the bid with tremendous enthusiasm and support," Jay Kriegel, the bid committee's executive director, told the Daily News.

Yesterday, the bid committee E-mailed the IOC a response to a June 6 technical report from the IOC's evaluation commission that listed the unapproved West Side stadium as a major problem. Officials are scrambling to put together a comprehensive document outlining the details of the new plan for an Olympic stadium in Queens.

With that in mind, bid officials were in Kansas City yesterday with architects with HOK, the firm hired by the Mets to design the stadium.

Though the IOC's executive committee must approve the city's Plan B before it can be presented in Singapore, Rogge signaled last week that New York won't be eliminated.

"There will be no proposal from the executive board of the IOC for New York to withdraw," Rogge told the Daily Telegraph of London.

Gov. Pataki said he believes the defeat of the West Side stadium hurt the city's chances of winning the Games, but he hopes the city will score points for its resiliency.

"I would hope the Olympic Committee would say, 'New York is an impressive place. When one door closes, they figure out how to open another one,'" Pataki said.

CHANGING THEIR TUNE

City and local Olympic officials suddenly have warmed to a Queens Olympic stadium. Here's what they said before and after the proposed West Side stadium fell through:

BEFORE

The West Side is "so far ahead of any alternative ... there's no reason to look at anything else."

"You should get on a plane and go to see the places where the Olympics have taken place. You will realize that Shea Stadium is not of the same order of magnitude or grandeur that the IOC wants for the Olympics. Nor is it of the same order of magnitude or grandeur that the other cities have promised to either build or already have."

AFTER

"I don't think having this plan hurts us at all."

"Well, it will be a tougher sell than if we had gotten our first choice. ... You want to go in with the best chance you have, but you have to - if the best chance you have is something different - then you go with that and you work as hard as you can."