Anne Warner Cribbs plans ahead. She's already worked out her schedule for the summer of 2012. On the afternoon of August 3, for example, she expects to be in Stanford Stadium -- for the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games.
As executive director of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee, Cribbs, '79, is leading the effort to bring the Games to the San Francisco area for the first time. She and her Palo Alto-based staff of three, plus a handful of consultants and volunteers, are preparing a bid to submit to the United States Olympic Committee in December.
Cribbs, who won a gold medal in swimming at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, agreed to take on the project after the American Basketball League, a professional women's league she co-founded, folded in December 1998. She wants to involve athletes in the bid process -- the organizing committee boasts 18 local Olympians on its board -- and overcome the perception that landing the Games requires bribery of officials. "If we can present the cleanest, most honest bid, that would be a contribution," she says.
Bob Stiles, the group's bid director, is busily completing the 595-page application, which details proposed venues, transportation, housing, security, and the environmental and economic impact of the Games. "The Bay Area can give to the athletes and people of the world the most special experience of the Olympic Games," says Stiles, '70, MA '74, who has worked on three other cities' bids and managed the 1996 Olympic stadium in Atlanta. "We have the infrastructure, we have the weather, we have everything you need. We can do more because we need less to stage the Games."
Although San Francisco is the official host city named in the bid, the organizing committee plans to spread events throughout the region. Cribbs hopes to slate as many as eight sports, including marquee event track and field, at Stanford venues. Using University facilities not only makes sense, says Stiles, but, since he and Cribbs are alumni, "there are also selfish motivations."
The Bay Area is competing against Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Tampa, Fla., and Washington, D.C., to be the U.S. nominee for the 2012 Games. The USOC -- which has not bid on the Summer Olympics since Atlanta -- will select one of these contenders in the fall of 2002, and the International Olympic Committee will make a final decision in 2005. Cribbs won't trash the competition, but she's willing to predict one thing: come August 3, 2012, the sun will be shining over Stanford Stadium -- and she plans to be there.
-- Kathy Zonana, '93, JD '96
