Never Be Hot Favourite to Win the Olympics

So Rio gets the Olympics gig for 2016, just two years after Brazil stages the football world cup, and few predicted this, least of all Barack Obama who came to the IOC vote in Copenhagen to nail the deal for Chicago. It just goes to show you can never forecast the result when it comes to Olympic bids. Colin Moynihan can vouch for this. He and I appeared on the Nicky Campbell radio show on Five Live on the morning, four years' ago, when the winning city to host the 2012 Games was about to be announced. My prediction was that it had been Paris all the way but London were catching up so fast it would be neck a neck at the finish line - slight sitting on the fence there, I grant you. Moynihan, the former Minister for Sport and Olympic rowing silver medallist as a cox, was a great deal more bullish. It would be Paris, he proclaimed, because he knew a bit more about sports politics. Four hours later IOC President Jacques Rogge said the immortal word "London." A few months later Moynihan became Chairman of the British Olympic Association, whose main purpose in life is to prepare for the London Olympics. Isn't life grand?