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Rome’s Bid: Facilities, Funds and Panache

ROME — Ever since ancient times, when chariots raced around the Circus Maximus and gladiators battled in the Colosseum, Rome has had a tradition of games as spectacles. So it follows that as the new millennium approaches, the city again wants to take center stage in the international sports arena as host of the 2004 Summer Olympics.

And like the emperors of ancient Rome who provided "bread and circuses" to keep their subjects happy, Rome’s modern political class has thrown its weight behind the bid, with Mayor Francesco Rutelli acting as head cheerleader and Italian prime minister Romano Prodi pledging the government’s financial backing. But the biggest backer of Rome’s effort to land its first Olympics since 1960 is not a politician in the conventional sense.

Primo Nebiolo, the head of track and field’s international governing body, also is the honorary president of Rome’s bid committee and one of the most influential members of the International Olympic Committee. His voice will be a strong one when the 111-member IOC meets next month in Lausanne, Switzerland, to decide the site for the 2004 Games.

There are, however, cracks in what promoters would like to portray as a unified front behind Rome’s candidacy. An influential group of environmentalists and intellectuals formed a "no" committee to convince IOC members that awarding the Olympics to Rome would be a bad idea. The "no" committee cites traffic problems, smog and a history of overspending on public works projects, such as those undertaken when Italy hosted the World Cup soccer championship in 1990. Its members also argue that the city should be spared another major event like the Olympics just four years after the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the jubilee year of 2000, when an estimated 30 million pilgrims are expected to visit Rome to mark 2,000 years of Christianity.

Rome’s bid committee has put together a comprehensive plan that looks good on paper and helped it make the cut of five finalists.

"It is our opinion that Rome is one of the favorites," said Raffaele Ranucci, director general of the Roma 2004 committee. He said he believes Athens and Stockholm were also strong contenders because he sensed the feeling among Olympic officials that the Games should return to Europe after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. The other two cities competing for the 2004 games are Buenos Aires and Cape Town, South Africa.

"It’s certainly clear Italy has a good record of hosting and organizing major events," said Dick Pound, an IOC member from Canada. "In that sense, they don’t have to surmount the hurdle that Athens does, demonstrating if it gets the Games, it can do it."

Organizers say another strength of Rome’s bid is its facilities. Of the 38 sports venues required, only eight need to be built and four remodeled. They argue that the jubilee celebration works in their favor because much of the city’s infrastructure will have been improved for that event, including construction of a third underground subway line that would be extended to connect all the Olympic venues.

According to Rome’s plan, the Games would be staged in three main sites that ring the city to the north, east and south. The north Olympic area would be at the city’s Foro Italico Center, where an Olympic stadium built for the 1960 Games stands. The area also has a tennis stadium, where the Italian Open is played each year, and a swimming stadium, which was the site of the 1994 world championships.

The south Olympic area is envisioned in the city’s EUR area, a Fascist-era planned community of mixed office, commercial and residential use. The area would be the site for basketball and rowing.

Most construction would take place at the east area, where organizers plan to erect an Olympic village to house athletes and officials. A media village, restaurants, shops, 1,500 telephone booths, parking lots, gardens and facilities for leisure activities are also on the drawing board. In addition, another swimming center for diving and synchronized swimming events, a baseball stadium and other venues for volleyball, fencing and boxing events would be built at the site.

After the Olympics, promoters say the village would be used as dormitories for Rome’s universities.

According to the bid committee, financing for the construction, estimated at about $1 billion, would be guaranteed by the Italian government.

The only event in Rome’s center would be the equestrian competition in the city’s Villa Borghese park. The elegant hotels of the city’s nearby Via Veneto would be reserved for IOC members, sponsors and their families.

"It is our strategy that the games be held in these three areas away from the center so that everything is not concentrated in the city," Ranucci said. "This way the center can breathe."

In a city infamous for its congested traffic, transportation is a significant hurdle. To address the problem, organizers say one lane of the city’s chronically chocked ring road would be devoted exclusively to Olympic traffic.

Members of the "no" committee are skeptical of organizers’ claims that it takes only 23 minutes to reach the center of town from Rome’s main Leonardo Da’Vinci Airport. They also say estimates of travel time on the ring road between sporting venues is vastly understated.

"It would be a nightmare for the public," said Carlo Ripa di Meana, a founder of the "no" committee who is the former leader of Italy’s Greens party and a member of the European Parliament. He also questioned whether new construction planned for the Olympics would make Rome a better place for Romans.

"All those new sports stadiums will remain after the games and become like cathedrals in the desert," he said.

The "no" lobby also fears that if Rome is awarded the 2004 Olympics, cost overruns could escalate on construction projects. In its pamphlet, titled "Ten Good Reasons to Say to ‘No’ to the 2,004 Olympics", the committee cited the overspending and corruption that plagued stadiums across the country reconstructed for the 1990 World Cup Soccer Championship.

But Mayor Rutelli and Ranucci insist the Olympics would be good for Rome, its citizens and Italy’s image abroad.

"The important thing is that we have shown the world the seriousness and professionalism of Rome’s candidacy," Ranucci said.

Thursday: Buenos Aires