Incheon Enters Final Phase in Asian Games Bid

“For the remaining six days, we will do our best to bring the games to Incheon.”

The 2014 Incheon Asian Games Bid Committee has embarked on their last efforts to muster support as the time for final decision nears. The winner of the heated competition will be announced at 7:30 p.m. on April 17 (KST) in Kuwait City.

The bid committee says that they have already secured more than half of the 45 member states’ votes in the Olympic Council of Asia. “It has been examined that 23 OCA member states are backing us. There are only about 10 supporting the Indian city of Delhi,” Park Dal-hwa, the public relations director of the committee, said on April 10.

However, the circumstances are not good enough to relax just yet. China has claimed its support for Delhi and still more than 10 votes are floating. The bidding committee is therefore going all-out to garner support from the undecided countries.

After returning from his tour of 30 OCA states, including Kazakhstan, Shin Yong-seok, president of the committee, is visiting countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran as they are still reluctant to state clear support for either candidate city.

Shin will try to lobby the heads of each National Olympic Committee when they arrive in Kuwait to take part in the OCA General Assembly starting on April 14. He said, “In cooperation with our embassy at Kuwait, we will invite NOC commissioners to a dinner to ask for support. We will also run a booth to publicize our efforts.”

Incheon Mayor Ahn Sang-soo will also depart for Singapore on April 12 to meet NOC officials of Bahrain and Qatar and join the rest of the bid committee in Kuwait on April 16.

The election to decide the host city of the 17th Asian Games to be held in 2014 will be conducted via a secret ballot. Interim election results during the vote counting will not be released.

beetlez@donga.com