GAMES OF THE XXXI OLYMPIAD DECISION DAY:THERE is something about the Danes which is suited to the ghastly business of Olympism. Getting up early in Copenhagen this week is a risky thing to do unless you stick close to the breakfast buffet bar.

Going out and about involves the risk of fresh air and the danger of being overrun by the roseate legions of joggers and cyclists who course the city streets with healthy glows and quality of life smugness about them.

When the cyclists dismount they leave their bikes unlocked and untended. Pointedly, they are all living in perfect harmony while we Irish, one of their former conquests back when the Vikings were a Premiership outfit, are living hand to mouth and should seriously consider sending raiding parties to steal all those bikes.

All this rude good health and bracing exercise is an affront to the journalists who must be vigilant and always ready to flee from blondes in T-shirts offering them fun runs. For the members of the International Olympic Committee, however, Denmark must be a living nightmare.

These IOC voting sessions are usually pretty good jollies after all. They get held in places where the IOC members would like to live it up a little, usually at the expense of bidding cities. They selected Atlanta while partying and singing karaoke in Tokyo, they went for Sydney while gambling in Monte Carlo, chose Athens in their home playground of Lausanne, picked Beijing in the seedy splendour of Moscow and plumped for London in soupy Singapore.

Coming to Denmark, though, must be a bit of a culture shock to the IOC.

The Danes are more Olympian than the IOC themselves.

They stride purposefully about their pretty capital with the energy of Vikings and the purposefulness of Corinthians. It’s like the bloody Olympics every day.

The Danes haven’t lavished the gerontocracy of the IOC with presents and fattening foods. On Wednesday, though, they offered the cruel and unusual punishment of a mini Olympics in Osterbro stadium with 8,000 rosy-cheeked schoolchildren. Much quoting of WC Fields who liked children – fried.

Yesterday for the expense account set there was a two-hour VIP bike tour from the Bella Center, where it all goes down, to the City Hall which is 20 minutes away in the shuttle bus which we view as a healthy alternative to cycling. VIP bike tours? That’s the sort of reckless endeavour which could reduce the elderly IOC electorate by up to half in the course of an afternoon.

The average IOC member is as healthy, as vigorous and as devious as the Montgomery Burns character in The Simpsons. Even last night’s Countdown Olympic Party in City Hall Square had a terrible air of healthiness and Olympism wafting from it, with enthusiastic demonstrations of street soccer and BMX and volleyball and other sports that you would have to be a Dane to love.

This evening before the announcement but after the voting the Danes have organised a 5k and a 10k run from the press centre for anybody who wants to take part. Hate to be rude, etc, etc. And so it goes. The hacks will go home tomorrow once the winning city has been announced and celebrated but the IOC are trapped here for another week which features such wholesome delights as The Youth Games of Danish Towns, a Saturday afternoon roller skating “Social Run”, some tree planting and assorted demonstrations of how healthy the Danes really are. The IOC must be counting the days.

Before they can escape they must choose a candidate city by way of doing what they are good at, being schmoozed and glad handed and generally kowtowed too. The end result will be awarding the Games to a city which will host them at too great a cost for the creation of too few jobs. It’s like trying to give Fás away but this time there are suckers who want it.

The very slight favourites remain Chicago who despite being surprisingly poor for the last few years at the lobbying business (they have a patrician Republican called Patrick Ryan leading the bid with dulling solemnity) have enjoyed a surge of energy in the last few days having carpet bombed the IOC with celebrities, the greatest of whom, Barack Obama, will be present and duly deferential this morning.

Rio de Janiero have been selling sport, sex, sand and samba. IOC members have been responding well to the promise of three of those items. A week in Copenhagen may have finished many of them with sport. The sense is Rio have perhaps peaked a little too soon.

Yesterday it was being whispered in Olympic circles that there had been a late rush of money backing the bid from Madrid and the odds had certainly shortened for the Spanish capital.

Such a late rush of money is a tribute to the lasting talent for political cajolery of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former IOC president, who has apparently been busy calling in favours from a wide range of IOC members who he ushered into the junket paradise which is membership of the IOC.

Samaranch may still have a lot of clout but when it comes to the crunch it is difficult to see the IOC opting for another European Olympics four years after the London Games. And with a posse of European cities shaping as candidates for 2020, several European votes will seep away from the Madrid bid if it begins to look serious.

All of which means a first round exit for the poor Japanese whose bid on behalf of Tokyo was judged to be the best technical bid and the most watertight financially. The word seeping out of the IOC sessions is the members have had enough of earnest Asians for the time being, having spent so long in Beijing last year.

Such are the sophisticated ways in which Olympic bid races are decided. If Barack Obama does the meet and greet to perfection this morning all other considerations fall by the way side. Hopefully he will invite the members of the IOC to join him for a fun run before he hightails it back to Washington.

What a fine Olympian spectacle that would be.

Everything you didn't really need to know about 'The Vote'

Number of IOC members voting – 106.

Means of voting – Electronic.

IOC members not permitted to vote in first round being from nation with candidate city: USA 2, Japan 2, Brazil 2, Spain 1.

One member is currently suspended so there will be 97 votes in the first round. President Jacques Rogge absents himself from voting also.

The city with the least number of votes in the first round is eliminated and its IOC representatives permitted to vote in subsequent rounds.

If after the first round of votes no city has an absolute majority of the votes cast the city with the least votes is eliminated and the IOC holds as many rounds as are necessary to obtain a majority

How important is the first round? Only matters in terms of not being eliminated. Atlanta trailed Athens by four votes in the first round in 1990 and remained behind or level with the Greek capital for the next two rounds, only taking the lead with the elimination of Melbourne.

Three years later Sydney trailed Beijing all the way to the final round. In the last voting session held in Singapore in 2007 one IOC member pressed the wrong button for his first round vote, voting for Paris instead of Madrid.

If he had got things right Paris would have been eliminated in the first round.