THE race is finally over. That "New York 2012" clock I've watched for the last year and a half on my mantel has counted down to zero.
After a grueling battle involving London, Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris for the right to play host to the 2012 Olympics, we will have a winner announced this morning. Critics who have monitored Olympic bid campaigns say they can't remember a race this combative and this unpredictable.
Before she went to bed late last night, the I.O.C. member Anita DeFrantz said this was the first time she did not have a sense of which city had made the winning bid.
Paris had long been viewed as the front-runner to stage the 2012 Summer games. "Nobody asked me what city was in the lead," DeFrantz said in a telephone interview from Singapore. "I think the media just makes those decisions. I haven't been asked once."
So I asked who she thought was in the lead. "I really couldn't tell you now," she said. "Usually, at least for me, it's more clear-cut; this time, it is not."
DeFrantz did not think this bidding process was any more hotly contested than others. The difference, she said, was that for the first time New York was in the mix.
"This is the first time New York has experienced the bid process," she said. "It's always significant. It's always a big deal."
With all due respect to DeFrantz, who has been an I.O.C. member since 1986, the Pursuit of 2012 was a study in glitter. For all the talk about scaling back the Games, the 2012 race was driven by an unprecedented use of celebrity power. Famous athletes, politicians, and business tycoons genuflected before I.O.C. members.
Paris had President Jacques Chirac of France and the movie producer Luc Besson; London had Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and the soccer star David Beckham; New York took Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, and Muhammad Ali; Madrid had Queen Sofía of Spain; and Moscow, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov of Russia.
Ed Hula, the editor of the newsletter Around the Rings, has covered eight bidding campaigns. He said this was by far the most intense. "These are cities that excel at public relations and self-promotion," he said of Paris, London and New York. "They are the big guys in the world neighborhood. You don't get much bigger than these three cities."
The celebrity barrage made in the final days before the vote seemed more like something out of Oscar week, with celebrities parading in and out of hotels and chatting up I.O.C. members at receptions.
DeFrantz said that there was a unique twist to this 2012 bid.
In the past, I.O.C. members could visit potential host cities to meet with the bid committee. That is no longer allowed and the bid committees have to find other ways to get the I.O.C.'s attention.
"I know that it's different because the rules are different," DeFrantz said. "But the deal is, we're the ones who vote, so you want to be able to make sure that the people who vote know what the city offers to the athlete, what it offers to the Olympic movement and how hosting the Games will affect the city."
There is, of course, a larger question. Why did these cities climb over one another to get these Games? There is little evidence to suggest that the Games solve long-term unemployment problems. Post-Olympic reports often show that host cities lose money and often wind up with herds of concrete white elephants.
"Each city is different," DeFrantz said. "Sydney wanted to prove that they could do it. For Athens, I think it was a little bit of the fact that this was their event and they hadn't been able to host it since 1896."
The truth is, everyone wants the Games because everyone wants a piece of Olympic booty. If you're Woody Johnson, the Jets' owner, you use the Games as a Trojan Horse to hide your real goal: a new football stadium. If you're Fred Wilpon, the Mets' principal owner, you want the Games to get you out of a dump called Shea Stadium and into a new baseball palace. If you're a developer, you're salivating at the chance to get an Olympic contract.
The British journalist Andrew Jennings has written three scathing critiques of the Olympic movement and the I.O.C. He co-wrote "The Lords of the Rings" and wrote "The New Lords of the Rings" and "The Great American Swindle" about the Salt Lake City scandal.
"One of the frequently uniting factors of all these bids, for all these cities is a small group of people who wish to get richer than they already are or have jobs for even longer," Jennings said yesterday by telephone from England.
"Whichever city wins tomorrow - there's seven years' work for that lot. The unifying factor is self-interest by property speculators."
In the wake of stricter guidelines, the new lobbying strategy was to wow the committee members with glamour and power.
I think we've stumbled on a new Olympic motto:
If you can't bribe 'em, seduce 'em.