N.Y. Eliminated in Vote for 2012 Olympics

SINGAPORE (AP) —

Standing in Rockefeller Center on a gray Wednesday morning, Nick Patrickas absorbed the bad news: New York's bid to host the Summer Games came up short. The weather fit his mood.

"Everybody seems disappointed," said Patrickas, a painter from Huntington, on Long Island, who came into Manhattan hopeful of a New York victory.

One month after their bid to build a $2 billion stadium on the West Side of Manhattan was torpedoed, city Olympic officials had their bid shot down in Singapore by the International Olympic Committee.

A planned Rockefeller Center victory party instead turned into an outdoor wake. A giant Jumbotron, used earlier to beam in a feed of the vote, now carried a message of defeat: "Thank you New Yorkers for your support."

Leo Zuniga, 44, of Westbury, wasn't surprised by the result: "The other cities have a longer history of bidding for the games." New York was the second city eliminated, after Moscow. Madrid dropped out third, leaving Paris and London.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York bid organizer Dan Doctoroff and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton all traveled to Singapore to help the city make its last-ditch pitch to the 116 voting IOC members. Oddsmakers put the city's hopes as a long shot.

Barely a month ago, it was unclear if the city would even make a presentation in Singapore. A bitter political fight ended with the scuttling of the planned stadium on Manhattan's West Side, once considered the key to New York's bid.

But the city moved forward with a revised plan featuring a less-expensive stadium in Queens that would double as a replacement for Shea Stadium, current home of the New York Mets. On Tuesday, the IOC's executive board approved the new bid.

Patrick Keane, 57, felt the city offered things that its competitors did not.

"It's a very international city, so every country could feel welcome and supported," he said. "It could have been a focus for development of certain parts of the city ... and there's just the whole ripple effect of having the Olympics."