New York Olympic bid may be dropped

New York Olympic bid leaders are to decide whether or not to pull out of the contest for the 2012 Games after plans for their stadium were blocked.

The city’s bid is in tatters following the decision to refuse funding for the Olympic stadium near Madison Square Garden - IOC members would find it impossible to support a candidate who can not even guarantee the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics events.

Many Olympic watchers believe New York may as well withdraw from the running now and leave London, Paris, Madrid and Moscow to battle it out until the vote on July 6.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said: “We will be consulting with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) which selected us to represent the United States and its citizens.”

Whatever the decision, it will have little impact for London and the other cities, for even if there was a remarkable turnaround in the remaining weeks for New York, the damage has been done.

The stadium problems were highlighted in the IOC evaluation commission’s report published yesterday and though the initial reaction from the New York bid team was that they would keep going until the vote, the prospect of an embarrassing knockout in the first round is so real that they may well re-think their course of action.

The other possible embarrassment is that the IOC may decide New York should not go to the full vote.

Meanwhile, international sports federations yesterday decided to press IOC members not to drop any of the 28 sports from the 2008 Games.

Denis Oswald, president of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations said: “It was unanimously agreed they should avoid the risk of disruption to this successful balance of the programme.

“It’s like a house of cards - if you take one card out then the whole thing might fall down.”

Oswald added though that they were not against changes in the future.