This morning in a hall in Singapore a 13-year-old girl will hand an envelope to a former dentist called Jacques Rogge. There will be a pause for dramatic effect, writes Tom Humphries in Singapore
Then Mr Rogge will open the envelope and he will read out the name of a city. All hell will break loose. Isn't that what sport is all about?
The 117th Congress of the International Olympic Committee got under way in Singapore yesterday with a traditional chorus of pieties and a gruelling display of local dance.
The turkey-shoot proper takes place today, though, when the delegates vote to decide which one of five competing cities will host the 2012 Olympic Games. There will be blood on the floor and feathers in the air by the time the result is announced by IOC president Rogge just after teatime local time.
Yesterday Singaporeans regarded their city as children might view a night sky full of shooting stars.
Here, Senator Hillary Clinton did a breakfast press conference on behalf of New York. Over there, Muhammud Ali appeared on stage with a billionaire and shadow boxed. In that corner, David Beckham went to a science museum (yes, the words "Beckham" and "science museum" appeared in the same sentence). Beckham's less cerebrally-gifted team mate, Raul, pressed the flesh on behalf of Madrid. Tony and Cherie Blair were everywhere the zeligs of gladhanding.
And Jacques Chirac touched down to be confettied with questions as to whether or not he had been mean about the plain and stolid food of Great Britain in a private joke at the weekend. Media representatives from the land of the rosbif converged in high dudgeon to inquire if their low cuisine had actually been disparaged. Chirac walked through it all with a hauteur which suggested that not much needed to be said about the hell's kitchen which produces British grub.
This is supposed to be sober business, of course. The mainlining of glitz and the obscene celebrity fondling are venials which the IOC allegedly forswore after the deliciously corrupt campaign which earned the 2002 Winter Olympics for Salt Lake City. Those crazy Mormons cost the IOC years of investigations, six expulsions and three resignations. This time around, the detailed IOC evaluation reports on each city are supposed to be definitive.
Mmmm right. The International Olympic Committee in Singapore this week is like the stereotypical blonde who earnestly avers that personality is all that matters in a relationship before hurdling into the nearest Ferrari.
All week it has been London driving that Ferrari and doing the most effective wooing and knee squeezing. That London's glamorous, celeb-bejewelled, media-driven bid has been working is evident in how clearly it has been getting under the noses of their French and Spanish rivals, who have been moaning daily.
London has offered a more old-fashioned bid, which itself has cost twice as much ($64 million) as either of it's nearest rivals. The English have no stadium built but are big on glitz and long on the sort of "legacy" the IOC nabobs love.
Three months ago London was dead in the water; today it is within a few votes of pulling off the greatest comeback act in bidding history.