Olympic underdog

Our reading of the Working Group Report for the 2016 Olympic Games is that Prague has little hope of ever being a true contender for hosting the Summer Olympics. Tomáš Petera of Praha olympijská was technically right when he told Czech Radio that the report doesn't identify any insurmountable barriers, but Prague scored at or below the benchmark in nearly all the 11 rating categories. In one of the two most-important categories, accommodations, Prague failed to provide a figure for the number of 3-5 star hotel rooms (not beds). The IOC's benchmark is 40,000, but Prague only came close to this (31,897) by including 1-2 star rooms as well. To put things in perspective, Madrid has a population three times bigger than Prague's but only 40,472 rooms in the 3-5 star class. The Working Group Report tends to confirm the belief that Prague is simply too small to host the Olympics. [Czech Republic International Olympic Committee Games]