Hosting the Olympics
by Elizabeth Chambless
A new Olympic host city is chosen well in advance for each Olympic game. If you thought it was chosen by a roll of the dice then you'd be wrong.
According to Olympic.com, there is a new two-phase screening process that was adopted in 1999 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to determine where each Olympic game will be held.
This two-phase process means that cities have to pass an initial selection phase. This phase consists of a team of experts who examine basic technical requirements and then pass this information on to the IOC Executive Board according to Olympic.com.
The cities that applied for their city to be the host of the 2008 Olympics were Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Havana, Istanbul, Kuala, Lumpur, Osaka, Paris, Seville, and Toronto.
According to Olympic.com, phase two consists of a full bid process. Once the cities are approved by the Executive Board they become official Candidate Cities. The five of the ten Candidate Cities chosen on August 28, 2000 by the IOC Executive Board were Osaka, Paris, Toronto, Beijing, and Istanbul.
These cities are then put forward into a full bid process where each city must submit a Candidate File. Then the IOC Evaluation Commission will visit each Candidate City where they survey the city to determine the ability of the city to hold the Olympics by inspecting the site where the Olympics will be held. The Evaluation Commission then submits a written report of their findings of each city to the IOC two months prior to the Session where the host city is elected.
The winning host city of the 2008 Olympics, Beijing, was announced in Moscow, Russia at the 112th Session of the IOC.