How long does it take before New York’s Olympics supporters start talking about a rematch next time around? Maybe 60 seconds. “It probably makes New York that much stronger for the 2016 bid,” said gold medal-winning decathlete Dan O’Brien (Atlanta 1996), just after London was announced as the winner of the 2012 summer games. “Because it goes to London, we’ll probably have that much more strength to bring it to North America.”
Of course, the same could have been said had Paris or Madrid won, and the idea of awarding the games to an English-speaking country twice in a row can’t be too appetizing to the rest of the world.
And fingers are already pointing at Daniel Doctoroff, for stubbornly sticking to the stillborn West Side Olympics stadium plan until it became too late to rescue the City’s bid.
And while, in recent days, talk of 2016 had been forbidden as a jinx, now, it’s a free for all. At 7 a.m., about a half hour after New York lost on the second round of voting, David Oats launched his website to bring the Olympics to Queens in 2016.
He and his Queens Olympics Committee had been pushing to move the main stadium to Flushing Meadows for more than three years before the Mayor finally relented. Maybe they know something we don’t.
– Matthew Schuerman
