Those services? It was during that interview when Farnawani claimed alleged responsibility for orchestrating the decisive votes.

“I am the one who made it for them,” he told the undercover reporters. “OK? I got this written commitment. I sat down with two of the IOC’s. I finished with them, I got their 100 percent assurance. We won!"

El-Farnawani’s services were cited as key in the Salt Lake bid scandal, reportedly assuring bid leader Tom Welch and deputy Dave Johnson that the bid would have “The Arab vote.” One of the documents included in the bribery indictment of Welch and Johnson was a two page hand-written note from 1994 describing the various needs of IOC members and what could possibly be done to win their respective votes.

Publicly, both El-Farnawani and Coates have denied any wrong doing, with both men insisting that the relationship they shared was about the sharing of information and necessary contacts instead of outright bribery. Still, the evidence that surfaced during the Salt Lake scandal and through the BBC documentary still lingers, asking what if? And what exactly went down during the last-minute, back-door dealings that night 13 years ago in Monte Carlo?

When Beijing started the process of bidding for the 2008 Olympics back in August of 1999, it was just mere months after the bid scandal has reared its ugly head. Following the crushing defeat at the hands of Sydney, the Chinese capital didn’t submit a bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games, later awarded to Athens. Though many experts believe that the IOC wouldn’t award back-to-back Summer Games to two cities with the relative time-zone proximity of Sydney and Beijing, some alleged bitterness was said to have factored into the decision not to bid. When Beijing was elected as the host city for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad on July 13th 2001, a whole set of rules and regulations for electing an Olympic host city were already well in place.

FROM THE BEAM TO THE STAGE

Carly Patterson is the latest in a long line of athletes trying to venture into the music industry.

The 2004 Olympic all-around gold medalist was last seen on FOX’s new reality series “Duets”, which pairs celebs with music icons in an “American Idol” style competition. In the first episode, Carly was seen belting “I Hope You Dance” alongside country star Lee Ann Womack.

“I wanna be a pop star,” Patterson told the Dallas Observer. “That’s my next thing.”

In addition to appearing on the show, Carly has teamed up with Joe Simpson (father of Jessica and Ashlee) on a series of demos with the hope that she’ll eventually be picked up by a major label.

MORNING SWIMMING FINALS IN 2008?

The International Olympic Committee is seriously considering a request by NBC that would move the swimming finals from the evening to the morning hours, in order to accommodate a primetime U.S. television audience.