BACKGROUND: How the IOC elects Olympic host cities

Copenhagen - No quick winner like Beijing for the 2008 Games is expected when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) elects the host city of the 2016 Olympics on Friday in Copenhagen. The race between Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo is too close to call and the full three rounds of voting are expected in order to get the required absolute majority. The IOC has 106 members but those from the bid cities' countries are not eligible to vote as long as their city remains in the race. This affects six members (Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr of Spain, Japan's Shun-ichiro Okano, Brazilians Joao Havelange and Carlos Arthur Nuzman, and Anita DeFrantz and James Easton of the US), in the first round in Copenhagen on Friday. Provided they all come to Denmark, 100 IOC members will take part in the first round. However, IOC president Jacques Rogge does traditionally not vote, leaving 99 members, for an absolute majority of 50. As long as that majority is not reached, the city with the lowest number of votes is eliminated after each round, and its country's IOC members then allowed to join the vote for the remaining candidates. When Sydney won the IOC vote for the 2000 Games in 1993, it lagged behind Beijing until the fourth and final round which it won by two votes. Beijing, for its part, then got the overall majority for the 2008 Olympics in 2001 in the second of a possible four rounds, beating Toronto, Paris and Istanbul. The election system means that second or even third preferences of IOC members can be important. Rogge recently named this voting system fair as he dismissed a winner-takes-all format in one round. 'We want to have strong support of the majority of the IOC. So the system we are doing is a majority system that is very democratic. It is perfectly legitimate that a member might prefer city A and when city A is eliminated the choice of the member goes to city B,' Rogge said.