AP News, July 1st, 2007
Forced into a catch-up mode after a rocky campaign, Austria went on the offensive Sunday in the final days before the vote on the host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, the first of three heads of government to come to Guatemala to push his country's bid, said Salzburg can't compete with the money thrown behind rival bids from Russia and South Korea but has the ready-built venues, safe conditions and passionate crowds that the others can't offer.
"Is the vote for the sake of Olympic ideals or is it for geopolitics?" Gusenbauer said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We do not need to have the Olympic Games for a special purpose for us. We think we can offer something special _ more emotion and more passion. This is what the Olympics so desperately needs."
Salzburg is competing against Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Sochi, Russia. The International Olympic Committee will select the host city on Wednesday by secret ballot in what is considered an extremely tight race.
Salzburg, boasting world-class venues and a long winter sports tradition, had once been considered the front-runner but fell back after bid leadership changes and fallout from the Austrian blood doping scandal at the 2006 Turin Games. The Austrians have also been greatly outspent by the Russian and Korean bids.
"My tradition is not to judge the other's bid. It should be a level playing field," said Gusenbauer, who also serves as Austria's sports minister. "But in life, one can overdo things. If the competition is about money, then we have no chance. That we know. Our bid is playing on a different level."
Russia, which has never hosted the Winter Olympics, has committed $12 billion to developing the Sochi area into a winter sports complex along the Black Sea coast. Pyeongchang, which nearly upset Vancouver in the 2003 vote for the 2010 Winter Games, is seeking to become the first Asian country outside of Japan to hold the Olympics.
"There are two types of candidates, and two different concepts," Gusenbauer said. "We have everything the others have to build."
"We are offering what money cannot buy," he said at a separate news conference. "It is the magical setting that took centuries to be created ... Winter sport in Austria _ this is part of our DNA."
Gusenbauer, who arrived Saturday night and is spending six days in Guatemala, said he plans to meet individually with 30 to 40 of the 111 IOC members before the vote.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun was arriving later Sunday, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to arrive Monday after his meetings with President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine.
"We count on the competition in Guatemala being honest, and if it is, then we have all chances to win," Putin said in Russia before flying to the U.S.
Drawing a parallel between the summit with Bush and the IOC's vote, he said, "In politics, as in sports, there is always competition. It's important for these competitions to be conducted under certain rules and with respect for each other."
Sochi bid chief Dmitry Chernyshenko took heart in IOC president Jacques Rogge's prediction that the vote would hinge on the "human factor," or how much the members trust the bid organizers.
"We're Russians," he said. "We have something in the soul. We're a reliable partner for the IOC."
The Sochi team brought in 120 tons of equipment aboard a giant Antonov An-124 aircraft, considered the world's biggest cargo plane, and even set up a skating rink next to the Olympic hotels. NHL great and Russian sports chief Slava Fetisov is expected to display his hockey skills and Olympic figure skating champion Evgeni Plushenko to perform some informal routines.
