Sorin Oprescu, the mayor of Bucharest would need to be ready for the Olympics by September

The mayor of Bucharest, Sorin Oprescu has seven months available to submit Bucharest"s application to host the Summer Olympics of 2020. The mayor has repeatedly said that he is very serious about it, even though apart from his good intentions, he has nothing that would give him a chance, considering he would be going up against cities such as Berlin, Rome, Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo for the Olympics of 2020. The cities wishing to host the Summer Olympics of 2020 must submit their applications by September 1st, 2011, said the chairman of the Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge. "I"m already thinking about hosting an Olympic competition in Bucharest, sometime in 2020", the mayor said in August 2010. Four months later, he seemed a lot more certain about the project: "In my opinion, this could be a project that would unite the nation, to escape this damn crisis. Can you imagine the benefits for the image of Romania and of Bucharest, simply by having this idea gain traction and submitting our application. I even made a poll and 85% of the citizens of Bucharest fully support this idea. The poll was made by phone, on a sample of 3,700 citizens of Bucharest, and 3,200 citizens in other cities. 93% of Romanians like this idea, and 85% of the citizens of Bucharest like it".

Over the next few months, the mayor must get in motion a proverbial army of people that would draw up projects, feasibility studies, polls. However, the first obstacle to be cleared is the General Council of the city itself. One month ago, the project failed to get the number of votes it needed in the Council. 22 councilmen voted in favor of Bucharest running for the Olympics, three of them voted against it, and 13 abstained. In order to be approved, the project needed 28 favorable votes. This first local defeat did not discourage the general mayor of Bucharest, who announced he would not give up on the idea.

A simple comparison between the costs of the last edition of the Olympics, which were hosted by Beijing in 2008, and those of the 2012 edition, to be hosted in London, gives us an overall image of the costs of preparing to host such an event. It needs to be said that in our case, everything would have to start from scratch, because Bucharest currently has no athletic track, shooting range, hippodrome, sports court, swimming pool or boating track that meet the Olympic standards. China, which hosted the most expensive Olympic competition in history spent 44 billion dollars, both on the urban infrastructure as well as the athletic campuses and the Olympic village where the athletes were lodged. For next year"s edition, London has announced a budget of 15 billion dollars, but it needs to be said that most athletic bases were already there and they just needed renovation. Qatar, which will host the World Football Championship of 2022, an important competition, even though it is not very important, has announced it will spend over 5 billion dollars.

For the mayoralty of Bucharest, raising 8 to 9 billion dollars seems like mission impossible, considering how difficult it was to come up with the 100 million Euros needed to finish the new National Stadium. The International Olympic Committee has very strict criteria for accepting applications. An incomplete brief or which contains inaccurate figures, could make a laughing stock out of the supporters of the project.