Could Finnish cookery gibe swing IOC vote?
Perhaps Jacques Chirac was just trying to be polite to his host when he dismissed Finnish cooking as the worst in the world on a visit to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad this week. After all, there’s nothing that the Finns can cook that the Russians cannot cook even worse. Even so, it is a quip that could cost France dear when the 100-plus voting members of the International Olympic Committee have to choose tomorrow between Paris, London, Madrid, New York and Moscow to host the 2012 Summer Games. Despite its small population, Finland has two IOC members: the former yachtsman Peter Tallberg, and Jari Kurri, an ice hockey star who won the Stanley Cup five times as Wayne Gretzky’s linemate at the Edmonton Oilers. Unlike the IOC members from France, Britain, Spain, the United States and Russia, both Mr Tallberg and Mr Kurri will be voting from round one. Between them, the pair represented their country at no less than seven Olympic Games and they may not be best pleased by M Chirac’s de
