In the midst of the demise of the West Side stadium plan Monday, the United States Olympic Committee was already trying to get its message to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the NYC2012 leaders: they cannot pull out of the race for the 2012 Olympics before the final vote next month.
Bloomberg stoked the U.S.O.C.'s fear by refusing to respond to a question Monday about the future of the bid. Many within the U.S.O.C. say that backing out might irreparably harm efforts to bring the Games to a United States city for years to come.
The U.S.O.C. is pushing NYC2012 leaders to follow through until the International Olympic Committee chooses from among New York, Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow on July 6 in Singapore, said a person close to the discussions who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
By yesterday morning, Bloomberg was still not answering the question about what comes next, but he was somber. "We have let down America," he said at a public appearance.
The rest of the NYC2012 team, including the bid founder and deputy mayor, Daniel L. Doctoroff, was working yesterday on how to salvage the bid. "We are reviewing the situation, consulting our key participants, including the U.S.O.C., and hearing from many, especially the Olympians, who are shocked and outraged by the actions of Albany's legislative leaders," Jay Kriegel, the executive director of the NYC2012 bid, said in a statement last night to The New York Times.
Jim Scherr, chief executive of the U.S.O.C., said that he and Chairman Peter Ueberroth spoke with Doctoroff and Kriegel on a conference call late yesterday and that NYC2012 was still exploring how to proceed.
"They are going to talk over the next couple of days and we will meet with them again to talk though their options," Scherr said in a telephone interview.
At issue for the U.S.O.C. is not just New York and the race for the 2012 Games, but bringing the Games to the United States in what they consider a reasonable interval. The U.S.O.C. counts on the popularity surge and the increased sponsorship that result when an Olympics is on home soil. And it is an unwritten guideline in the I.O.C. that the Games return to the United States at least once every 20 years, a nod to the American companies that form the majority of I.O.C. sponsors and to NBC, which provides the overwhelming majority of its television revenue.
The last Games held in the United States were the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; the Summer Games were held in Atlanta in 1996.
On Monday, the New York bid received a favorable review from the I.O.C. evaluation commission, which released reports on each of the five bids. But later in the day, the state's Public Authorities Control Board rejected the city's financial plan for a $2.2 billion stadium, which would have been paid for in part and used primarily by the Jets. Under the NYC2012 bid plan, the opening and closing ceremonies and the track and field events, all marquee events at any Olympics, would have been held at the stadium.
After a day of intensive lobbying, yesterday turned into a period to regroup.
Anita DeFrantz, a former Olympian and one of four American I.O.C. members, had written a letter with her three colleagues urging the Public Authorities Control Board to vote for the stadium, and said she had no idea what was ahead for NYC2012.
"We had hoped the stadium would be approved and I still hope somehow it can be approved," DeFrantz said in a telephone interview from her office in Los Angeles. "As an athlete, I believe the race isn't over until you're beyond the finish line."
The United States committee's concern now is that NYC2012 not appear disrespectful toward the I.O.C.
In 1973, Denver reneged on its commitment to be host of the 1976 Winter Games, and the committee worried for years that that would hurt future bids. But the world of Olympic bidding was different then. When Lake Placid tried for the 1980 Winter Olympics, it had no serious competition. Los Angeles was the only bidder outside of Tehran, Iran, for the 1984 Summer Games.
Now, with the Olympics restored to a potentially profitable and prestigious event, major world capitals are lining up for the chance to be the host. In this atmosphere, an about-face by New York would mar the image of the United States, which has a surprisingly small power base inside the I.O.C. with only 4 voting members of 116.
Clearly, if the U.S.O.C. been better organized in the initial stages of New York's bid, it would have insisted that NYC2012 develop a backup plan and not leave the bid vulnerable to the politics of an unapproved stadium plan, said people with longtime knowledge of the U.S.O.C., who did not want to be identified because they did not want to criticize New York's Olympic bid publicly.
But after New York was chosen as the United States bid city in November 2002, the U.S.O.C. was plunged into an organizational scandal that lasted nearly two years. It cost the chief executive Lloyd Ward and the president Marty Mankamyer their jobs. The 129-member board was dissolved, and a full-scale reorganization ensued; it was completed in 2004.
Under the current leadership of Ueberroth, the organizer of those pivotally successful 1984 Games, and Scherr, the U.S.O.C. would prefer a stronger role over its bid city.
Now, New York organizers have to decide how to proceed through the July 6 selection day, and, if they do not win, whether they want to pursue the 2016 Games. They would have to win another U.S.O.C. competition to be the American bid city.
And the U.S.O.C. is likely to require stricter guidelines for its bid cities to avoid another political fight undermining another bid.
Now, it is trying desperately to limit the damage from this one.