AS China recoils from the shock of losing the chance of hosting the 2000 Olympics, the recriminations and the analysis of where they went wrong have already started.
When International Olympic Committee president, Juan-Antonio Samaranch, was photographed on a bicycle in Beijing a few months ago, the result seemed almost sewn up. But in the following weeks something clearly went wrong with Beijing's appealing bid to open China's doors to a waiting world.
Many of the world's press, and several members of the Chinese delegation, are agreed that the greatest mistake the Beijing team made was to place Chen Xitong on the platform.
There could not have been a worse choice of Olympics bid chairman than the former mayor of Beijing, who four years ago had defended the butchery in Tiananmen Square.
And as the 89 voting members of the IOC made what was perhaps the hardest choice for Olympic host in their history, Mr Chen's presence could only have reminded them of the inevitable backlash and the inherent risks of marking Beijing on their voting card.
Beijing's bid was, from the beginning, a political bid, despite Vice Premier Li Lanqing's statement that ''sport and politics should not be mixed up''. No other city had to face the kind of detailed, hard hitting political questions that Beijing faced throughout the campaign.
