Olympics: French falter as Olympic voting begins

SINGAPORE - Faltering favourites Paris look to the arrival of French President Jacques Chirac in Singapore today to boost its bid to stage the 2012 Olympics in tonight's vote by the International Olympic Committee.

Paris faces London, Madrid, Moscow and New York in what is expected by IOC members to be the most closely fought bid contest in Olympic history.

The French delegation arrived in Singapore as favourites but London, Madrid and New York have been gaining momentum at their expense. IOC president Jacques Rogge has described the vote as too close to call.

While British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been busy meeting and greeting people in Singapore for three days and New York has been wheeling out mayor Michael Bloomberg, senator Hillary Clinton and boxing icon Muhammad Ali, the French have kept a surprisingly low profile.

Chirac was expected to appear at the opening of the IOC session overnight (NZT) and will take part in the Paris presentation today before flying off to join Blair at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

The Paris delegation is well aware that favourites have often been jinxed in the past. Three of the last four Summer Games hosts were not considered frontrunners.

Atlanta beat favourites Athens for the 1996 Games, Sydney defeated Beijing for the 2000 Olympics and Athens edged out Rome for 2004.

Winter Olympics votes have been equally unpredictable, with Albertville in 1992, Lillehammer in 1994, Nagano in 1998 and Turin in 2006 all surprises.

Paris has lost out twice before - beaten by Barcelona for the 1992 Games and finishing third behind Beijing and Toronto for the 2008 Olympics.

France needs to improve greatly on four years ago in Moscow, when it collected 15 of 102 votes in the first round compared with 44 for Beijing.

Under the voting system, the lowest-placed candidate drops out after each round of balloting until one emerges with an overall majority.

This time, most observers expect the decision to go to the wire with four full voting rounds before Rogge announces the decision shortly after 11.30pm.

London is making light of the fact that it has never bid before, with Blair pointing to three previous British bids - Birmingham for 1992 and Manchester for 2000 and 2004.

However, none of the previous British bids picked up more than 13 votes from the IOC members.

Blair stressed the cosmopolitan characteristics of the British capital at a news conference yesterday.

"London is a vibrant, open city that welcomes all people and all cultures."

New York, also bidding for the first time, was upbeat at an early news conference by Hillary Clinton.

"This is a great bid from a great city for the greatest international event there is," she said, before adding a reference to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre.

"We're standing here a little less than four years from the time when we were attacked and we're telling you that New York City is the place to bring the 2012 Olympics - because the people of New York are resilient, they are extraordinary in their capacity to pull together and plan for the future.

- REUTERS