The Italian Olympic Committee(CONI) on Wednesday backed Rome's bid for the 2016 Olympics, locking horns with the city's mayor who appears ready to pull out.
Rome's centre-left Mayor Walter Veltroni said that "the conditions did not exist" for a bid, and stressed that the problem was "political, not economic". Veltroni said that the refusal of former premier Silvio Berlusconi's right-hand man, Gianni Letta, to be the head of the Rome 2016 organizing committee showed the centre-right is not behind the capital.
Berlusconi, who is Milanese, was thought to have preferred a Milan bid for the Games. Milan was in the running to be Italy's candidate for 2016 until CONI gave the capital the nod on Wednesday. "I don't feel the city should embark on an adventure that will create divisions," Veltroni said. "On the other hand, I hope this situation can be overcome".
He added that the main problem was not money because the city, which hosted the 1960 Games, already had lots of ports
facilities, so massive investments would not be needed to build new ones.
Veltroni first suggested making a bid for the Games a year ago.
But he has said all along that he would only press ahead if the city had support from the public, politicians and the worlds of Italian sport. Pundits believe the capital's bid for the 2004 Olympics was hampered by internal divisions within the Italian camp.
Veltroni has described losing out to Athens in 1997 as an "open wound". Sport Minister Giovanna Melandri - a member of the Democratic Left, the same party Veltroni belongs to - said the capital's mayor "was right to raise the issue of whether the country was behind a Rome bid to host the 2016 Olympics".
However, IOC member Mario Pescante, a Senator of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said that Veltroni was using Letta's rejection as an "alibi" not to make a bid. He suggested the real reason is that the centre-left government, which is struggling to get Italy's public finances under control, was reluctant to invest "10-15 billion euros" in staging the Olympics.
Later on Wednesday the small centre-right UDC party suggested holding talks to get Rome's bid back on track and to convince Letta to change his mind. "Rome's bid for the 2016 Olympics is so important for the country that there cannot be even the slightest delay in launching it," said UDC sports spokesperson Luciano Ciocchetti.
The success of the Turin Winter Olympics this February has fired enthusiasm for an Italian bid for the summer Games. The IOC is expected to start collecting bids in 2007 and will announce the winner in October 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Madrid and Moscow have announced they will try again after London beat them to the 2012 Games. By 2016 Rome's swimming facilities will have already been revamped for the 2009 world championships and a series of urban infrastructure projects will be finished, including two new metro lines.
If Rome were to be chosen it would be the second time it hosted the Games.
The 1960 Rome Olympics were the first Games to be fully covered on television. Those Olympics are best remembered for bare-foot Ethiopian marathon winner Abebe Bikila and a young American boxer called Cassius Clay, who took the light heavyweight gold medal.
