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IOC VP denies casting fatal 2012 vote

Nikolaou allegedly mistakenly picked Paris over Madrid, helping London win

Madrid fan despondentAP
An unidentified youth draped with a Spanish flag reacts to the news that the Spanish capital had not been chosen to stage the 2012 Olympic Games on July 6.

ATHENS, Greece - An IOC vice president denied casting a ballot that might have helped London win the 2012 Olympics.

“All this speculation surrounding my role in the third round ... is totally unfounded,” Lambis Nikolaou of Greece said in a statement Wednesday. “I state that I did not vote in the third round, as I had announced at the time of the vote.”

Senior Olympic official Alex Gilady said last week that Nikolaou mistakenly voted for Paris rather than Madrid during balloting July 6 in Singapore — tipping the balance toward London.

Gilady, an Israeli and member of the London 2012 Coordination Commission, described his claim as a “very serious assumption.”

Paris received 33 votes to Madrid’s 31 in the third round, eliminating the Spanish capital. Had Madrid received the vote, Gilady argued, the cities would have tied with 32 each, seven fewer than London, and entered a tiebreaker.

London beat Paris 54-50 in the final round. Moscow and New York were eliminated in the first two rounds of voting for the Summer Games.

On Tuesday, an IOC statement said one of its 104 voting members did not cast a third-round ballot in Singapore.

“Even if the 104th vote had been cast it is mathematically impossible that it could have changed the outcome of the third round of voting,” the statement said.

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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