Moments ago the FIDE General Assembly announced that the city of Istanbul will host the 2012 Olympiad. The Turkish bid defeated their opposition, a bid by Motenegro to host the event in the city of Budva, 95 votes to forty.
TCF boss Ali Nihat Yazici was jubilant when FIDE deputy president Georgios Makropoulos announced the winner. Yazici walked through a slick and professional presentation. Among other things, he promised to recruit 25 new federations and reaching up to 200 teams competing for the 2012 event.
For the opening and closing ceremonies, Yazici said, "We will show something you will never forget!" For that alone he's budgeted €500K.
On the other hand, the Budva bid was simply ridiculous. I've seen better effort for a high school project. For example, the presenter's poor English diction wasn't helped by her getting completely out of synch with what were supposed to be looking at on screen. And they didn't have what most audiences really like in a presentation: big numbers!
They did have plenty of sex, with shots of a bikini clad woman sweating in a sauna or sitting poolside. Still, other than a few giggles here and there, that one didn't seem to have any effect.
After both presentations, Yazici himself along with members of his delegation, stood just in front of me and were looking confident. What's their secret, I wondered.
On a side note, the PNG delegation failed to vote. "We got screwed", said PNG player Shaun Press.
In fact, it was entirely their fault! It seems that when a roll call was conducted, their man was nowhere within the meeting itself but downstairs picking up his accreditation badge. So, as far as the Assembly was concerned, no PNG presence, therefore no vote for them.
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Of course it was our fault (lest anyone believes we are complaining about unfair treatment).
At first we weren't sure why our name wasn't read out, but once David Jarret explained that our delegate had missed the roll call, it all became clear ....
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