London’s bid leader and former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe (right) receives a mock Olympic torch during a news conference on Thursday after London won the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in Singapore. (Reuters)

In the summer of 2012, the New York Olympics will go on as scheduled. Folks will wrestle over cabs. Most will keep pole vaulting over the soaring cost of housing. Police officers and teachers will continue boxing the bureaucrats for decent paychecks. And you know everyone will line up for the rat race.

Nothing will disrupt the chaotic daily life of New Yorkers as we know it, or make it more complicated and challenging than it already is. That’s how the people want it. And that’s why New York didn’t come close to getting the other Olympics.

It didn’t matter who went to Singapore on New York’s behalf to provide a glowing recommendation: the mayor, the Greatest, Senator Hillary and other assorted beautiful people. We could’ve sent Henry Hudson and the American Indians who gave Manhattan away for $24. It wouldn’t have made a difference.

It was all about selling the Olympics on New Yorkers, and the organisers never did that. The people who hand out Olympic host invitations love it when cities want them very badly and will do whatever it takes. I

When they receive mixed signals or worse, dead signals, they’re more likely to thumb their noses back. That’s what happened Wednesday when the world’s greatest city couldn’t even beat out Madrid. When word reached us around 6:30 am that New York was finished, people around here reacted the way they always do at that time of day: They yawned.

From the very start of this ambitious plan, there was no groundswell of support from the grassroots, no spirit, no unified effort between the big shots and the citizens, no passion by all of New York to get the Olympics. This was a one-sided effort from Mayor Bloomberg that was almost entirely driven by politics, his place in history and the desire to get a Manhattan address for the Jets.

The mayor and his cronies tried hard; give them that. They kept insisting how New York could use the Olympics, but the reality was more the opposite. The Olympics woul-d’ve benefited from the marketing, the media, the money, the exposure and the cache that New York can uniquely provide.

Plus, through the sheer diversity of its people, no other city in the world truly reflects the Olympic movement. But what was in it for New York? Besides the hassle, of course. New York didn’t need the Olympics for an ego boost. The summer tourist dollars flow here anyway, so that wasn’t an issue. There’s no part of the city that needs the kind of facelift that’s often accomplished through construction for the Olympics.

Sporting entertainment is provided by the Yankees and Mets. It’s not that New York can’t handle something on the gargantuan scale of the Olympics. The people looked at the Games and saw only potential headaches. Let’s not bother discussing security and transportation, even as sophisticated as both might be seven years from now.

Turning over the city for a few weeks, and dealing with years of preparation, just wasn’t an option for a good many people, and the reward for enduring the Games just wasn’t worth it. Had the people been on board, the West Side stadium would be a reality and the Games wouldn’t be far behind.

Had the New York bid been swelled by passion and fuelled by support from those who matter most, there would be the same size of anticipation in Manhattan Wednesday as there was in London and Paris. New York could not be rescued by desire, and believe this: It won’t in 2016, either. You get the sense this was a one-shot deal.

LAT-WP News Service