(ATR) The five bid cities vying for the 2020 Olympics make presentations to an IOC panel of experts Wednesday that will help decide which of them will make a shortlist of finalists to be announced in May.
The bids from Baku, Doha, Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo will each get around 45 minutes to explain the technical aspects of their applicant files via video conference.
It's the first time in any summer Olympic bid race that the IOC has held such a session.
Venue and transport concepts are expected to be a crucial part of the pitches to the IOC. Included in the allocated time is a question and answer session in which the bids will be asked to expand on various technical areas and maybe even to explain their budgets and government guarantees.
The IOC's Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli, sports director Christophe Dubi and Jacqueline Barrett, head of bid city relations, are understood to be part of the IOC panel. The group also includes experts from the international federations, NOCs and the the IOC Athletes' Commission.
One bid source told Around the Ringsthe presentation opportunity was being taken "extremely seriously".
"The IOC wants to drill down into areas of the applicant files that they are concerned about or are critical pressure points," the source said.
The IOC working group grilling the bids Wednesday is expected to make certain recommendations to the IOC Executive Board about the strengths and weaknesses of each applicant.
On May 23, the EB will decide whether to keep all five bids in the race for the 2020 Games or, more likely, to drop one or two bids.
Two of the five 2020 bid cities underlined the importance of Wednesday's video conference session with the IOC by revealing their high-level presentation teams to ATR.
Baku's six panelists are: sports minister Azad Rahimov, bid CEO Konul Nurullayeva, sport and venues director Elkhan Mammadov, Nazim Samadov, deputy minister of culture and tourism, Elmaddin Dadashov, head of downstream projects management for the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, and transport expert Devrim Kara.
Istanbul 2020's team includes: Turkish IOC member Uğur Erdener, who is president of the National Olympic Committee of Turkey, Hasan Arat, vice president of the NOC, Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, governor of Istanbul, Kadir Topbaş, mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Ahmet Haluk Karabel, president of TOKI, and Feridun Bilgin, deputy undersecretary of the treasury.
Despite non-disclosure, presumably Doha, Madrid and Tokyo will be represented by the bid leaders who have been associated with the campaign so far.
After Wednesday's video session before the IOC, the bids will spend the 10 days that follow fine tuning their presentations to the Association of National Olympic Committees in Moscow.
The five bids pitch ANOC delegates on April 14, ten minutes for each city.
Reported by Mark Bisson
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