As one of ten cities bidding to host the 2008 Olympic
Summer Games, Toronto "faces a crucial test at the end of
the month with talk circulating that as few as three
candidates will survive the first round of cuts" by the IOC
on August 29, according to Keating & Hendry of the Toronto
GLOBE & MAIL. The IOC "would not confirm that only three
bids would survive the initial scrutiny but sources did say
it was reviewing the various bid documents with an eye
toward making a hard cut." An IOC source, on the voting:
"There has been talk around about numbers, five, four. I
haven't heard three, but it could happen" (Toronto GLOBE &
MAIL, 8/12). In Dallas, Rana Cash wrote that Toronto "is
determined to make itself too sexy to be denied" in the vote
and with a $687M budget "is mounting a furious campaign
meant to dazzle" the IOC. Cash: "If Toronto wins, the
prospect of the Summer Games returning to North America four
years later becomes a sticky, if not impossible venture.
And if Toronto loses, it will reset its sights on 2012 with
a tremendous head start over the American competitors
initially trained on that year" (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 8/13).
EVERYTHING'S BIGGER...: In Houston, Thom Marshall wrote
that local attorney Douglas Caddy, via his TX Reform
Coalition, "is asking the rest of the world to pressure
Texas into reforming" its criminal-justice system by
circulating a "Worldwide Petition" for signers to oppose the
selection of Houston or Dallas as host of the 2012 Summer
Olympics. The 27-point petition contends TX "will correct
its present system of injustice only if it comes to realize
it will pay a heavy price to continue its old ways. It's
choice is to reform ... its human rights abuses," or become
"stigmatized in the eyes of the world." Caddy said that he
has mailed copies of his petition to newspapers in other of
the eight U.S. cities bidding for the 2012 Games, and he
"expects soon to have a Web site ready so that anyone in the
world can print out copies of the petition" then mail it to
the USOC (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 8/13).
