OSAKA -- Seventeen members of the International Olympic Committee are scheduled to tour 29 sports and other facilities during a visit to Osaka between February 25 and March 2, city officials said Friday.
During their stay, the IOC Evaluation Committee members will travel from Maishima Island in Osaka Bay, where an 80,000-seat stadium is to be built, to Lake Biwa, where canoeing events would be held. In addition, the committee will visit the beach near Kansai International Airport, where the city hopes to hold the triathlon event.
After bribery allegations surfaced in Atlanta, Nagano, and Salt Lake City's bids for the Olympics, the IOC banned visits to 2008 bid cities by voting members and created an Evaluation Committee to review the bids of Beijing, Paris, Toronto, Osaka, and Istanbul, the five candidate cities.
The committee consists of non-voting members who represent various international athletic federations, as well as two specialists in environmental issues, and is led by Hein Verbruggen from Holland and Gilbert Felli from Switzerland.
In addition to inspecting sports facilities, the committee will also take a look at the logistics of Osaka's bid, including transportation, accommodation, and security issues and especially environmental issues. Once the evaluation committee has toured all five candidate cities, it will present its recommendations to the IOC Executive Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, sometime in May. The 114 voting members of that committee will decide the winner in July.