N.Y., Europeans make bids

New York and four European capitals submitted their final bids to host the 2012 Summer Olympics by Monday's deadline, the International Olympic Committee announced.

New York is competing against Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow for the games.

The two major steps remaining in the process are site visits by an IOC Evaluation Commission, scheduled Feb. 21-24 in New York, and a vote and decision by the International Olympic Committee, meeting in Singapore next July. Details of the cities' final bids are to be revealed Wednesday, although much was already known from the preliminary bids and an earlier IOC evaluation.

Some critics say New York's bid is too costly, complicated and in the case of stadium plans, controversial.

But Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, touted New York's advantages Monday at a breakfast sponsored by the Association For A Better New York.

"This city offers an outstanding combination of marketing, financial and media power that can help the games achieve a new level of global prominence," Ueberroth said. "There is no doubt in my mind that New York has produced a bid that can win."

Ueberroth announced that Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and a longtime Olympic booster, would serve as the unpaid president and chief executive of the New York Olympics Organizing Committee if the city was selected. Doctoroff was named in a document signed by the city of New York, the state of New York, the state of New Jersey, Nassau County, the USOC and NYC2012, the committee he founded.

His role would provide seamless leadership, if New York were selected, from planning to bidding to building. Heads of the Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Vancouver Olympic committees were not named until months or years after they won the bids. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the games would add over $12 billion to the economy and create over 135,000 jobs, and he is promoting the stadium as a necessity for Manhattan.

New York is promising to build an Olympic stadium on the far West Side, with $800 million contributed by the Jets, who would own the stadium.

The city would also create an Olympic Village in Queens facing across the East River to the United Nations; the site would provide new housing after the games. New York sent 120 copies of its 562-page bid book, formally called a Candidature File, to IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The document was printed in French and English, the official languages of the IOC.

The NYC2012 Olympic budget is $3.7 billion, which does not include the privately financed athletes' village in Queens, or the $1.8 billion for the West Side stadium.

Paris is widely considered to be the front-runner in the 2012 Olympic sweepstakes. Unlike the other contenders, Paris was twice a finalist and has an Olympic stadium in place.