Saturday, September 23, 2000
Olympics in Cincinnati? Vehr keeps dream alive
By Paul Daugherty
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SYDNEY, Australia — Only Nick Vehr could look at Darling Harbor near downtown Sydney and see Cincinnati's central riverfront. Darling is a thriving center of shopping, dining and entertainment. Cincinnati's central riverfront is ... not.
Not yet, Vehr says.
“The (Ohio) river is not blue water and catamarans,” Vehr said here Friday. “It's jet skis. But when we get The Banks going, and that 40-acre park between the stadiums ...”
Vehr is one of 13 Cincinnatians here with Cincinnati 2012, the group working to bring the Olympics home. He has spent a week touring Olympic venues and further honing ideas he'll use in Cin cinnati's bid to become the U.S. city vying for the 2012 Games. The deadline for submitting the bid to the United States Olympic Committee is Dec.15. The USOC will choose the American bid city in the fall of 2002.
Regardless, Vehr already has won the gold medal for true belief. “I just think there's every reason to believe we can do this if we keep working at it,” he said.
Vehr pointed to the exhibition hall across the harbor. “They have five sports in there,” he said, “in just a little less space than what we'll have when we expand the convention center.”
Cincinnati is competing against New York; Los An geles; San Francisco; Tampa, Fla.; Dallas; Houston and Washington, D.C. If the odds seem long, Vehr would be happy to tell you a story he heard at breakfast the other day, from former USOC president Leroy Walker.
Walker told of taking a delegation of Atlantans on a tour of Barcelona while that city hosted the '92 Games. The visitors were awestruck. “We can't do this,” Walker recalled them saying.
Then Walker answered: “I'm glad you concluded that so quickly. Now, let's stop worrying about it and get something done.”
In Vehr's mind, the same can happen in Cincinnati.
Only 12 years to go.
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