ORLANDO, FL – Orlando joins Tampa in a bid to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to central Florida. The two-city combination improves Florida’s chances of landing the Olympics. The bid would have venues stretching along Interstate 4 from Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg to Tropicana Field in Tampa to the Orlando Convention Center. The two metro areas have two international airports and will have close to 200,000 hotel rooms by 2012. Under the arrangement, Tampa would be the center of an Olympics festival and Orlando its junior partner. Nine other cities are bidding to be the U.S. representative, which will be chosen by the USOC in 2002. Those cities are Arlington, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington. The IOC will chose a final site in 2005.
