Who will host the FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament?

With all the regional championships completed and nine teams set for next year’s Olympic games, three berths remain for teams vying for Beijing. And those three remaining spots will be determined by the FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament for Men that will be held July 7-13th, 2008 in a location that has yet to be determined.

According to FIBA, the bidding process to determine who will organize and host the event will begin as early as next week with a decision to where the tournament will be held to be decided in early December (8-9), 2007. And it sounds as if they will only accept submissions from the teams that are participating, which makes sense as far as filling up a stadium, but gives obvious advantage to the hosts which doesn’t seem very fair.

Already there are rumors that Greece, Korea and Puerto Rico are the early-favorites to host the event according to Alberto Garcia, one of the top ranked officials of FIBAAmericas. How is it possible to have favorites when the official bidding process hasn’t even started? If true, it doesn’t sound like a very even starting line for all the other countries looking to host the event.

The second-chance tournament will feature twelve teams that didn’t qualify in their own regional championships, but placed high-enough to qualify for this tournament. The first, second and third place finishers of this tournament will not only receive medals but will guarantee them a spot in Olympics, which is the actual prize. The twelve teams set to participate (in alphabetical order) are: Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Korea, Lebanon, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, and Slovenia.

The three teams that qualify through this tournament will join Angola, Argentina, Australia, China, Iran, Lithuania, Russia, Spain and the USA in the Beijing Olympics, and will have roughly a month to practice and prepare as the games run August 9-24th of 2008.

Related thread: Fiba Qualifying Tournament for Olympic Basketball 2008, Source: Fiba, Primerahora (Spanish)