Brisbane’s Olympic Games pitch built on the lessons of 40 years ago

The man who hopes to bring the 2032 Olympics home to Brisbane will reference a chastening ­moment in the city’s 40-year pursuit of the Games when he launches his final pitch.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner. Picture: AFP

The man who hopes to bring the 2032 Olympics home to Brisbane will reference a chastening ­moment in the city’s 40-year pursuit of the Games when he launches a final pitch to decision-makers in Tokyo.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner will tell International Olympic Committee delegates on Wednesday that the success of the 1992 Barcelona Games would be replayed in Brisbane if they gave the Queensland capital the nod.

“Our first Olympic bid was in the 1980s when we aspired to host the 1992 Games,” he will say. “Those Games went to Barcelona, a mid-size yet global city, like Brisbane. Like Barcelona then, we are an emerging city with relevant and growing infrastructure and international trade connections and appeal.”

Brisbane went into the 1992 Olympics bidding contest with high hopes of building on the success of its triumphal Commonwealth Games four years earlier, but came in third behind Paris and Barcelona.

The Catalan capital was the raging favourite thanks in no small measure to the efforts of then IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spaniard who would go on to endear himself to Australians by announcing that the winner to host the 2000 games was “Sid-eny”. This time around, Brisbane is the unbackable favourite in a field of one to clinch the 2032 Games. But that doesn’t mean the Australian team in Tokyo, headed by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, with Mr Schrinner and Australian Olympics boss John Coates backing her up, is taking anything for granted.

Perennial candidate Paris is said to be still working the IOC delegates, along with the Koreans who want to stage a joint North-South summer Games to emulate the success of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang where they set aside their differences to field a combined team.

The Germans, bemoaning a claimed lack of transparency in the IOC’s decision in February to name Brisbane as preferred bidder, are promoting a regional Games for the Rhine-Ruhr area.

Mr Schrinner will highlight how the Brisbane Games would have regional buy-in, with events spread across the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast but competitors accommodated centrally in a 14,000-bed athletes’ village only six minutes from the CBD.

Much of the necessary infrastructure was in the works.

“Looking at our plans for Brisbane is like peering into a city of the future; a friendly, clean and green city that is growing faster than all its contemporaries across Australia,” Mr Schrinner will tell the IOC movers and shakers.

“We are already gearing up with a suite of game-changing projects. Many are already underway. Our new Brisbane Metro bus system will transform and connect the city with world-leading high-capacity electric vehicles travelling on a network of dedicated busways.”

Former lord mayor Sallyanne Atkinson, who knows a thing or two about Olympics’ bids, having led Brisbane’s 1992 campaign in conjunction with Mr Coates, said she was confident the city had the Games in the bag this time.

“There isn’t anybody else,” Ms Atkinson insisted. “I’ve said that on television and my daughter said I sounded bitchy. But it’s the truth. This was really ours to lose if mistakes were made and that’s one of the reasons why I think it was important for Adrian and Annastacia to go to Tokyo. If they didn’t, the IOC could have put off making the decision and that would have been disastrous when other cities were still interested.”

Thousands in Brisbane and its surrounds are expected to flock to Olympics Live events hoping to hear IOC chief Thomas Bach name the city as 2032 Games host.