Milan Jirásek, chairman of the Czech Olympic Committee, tells an underdog story about the 1994 Winter Olympics. "When the president of the Olympic committee opened the envelope to see who won, he didn't know how to pronounce Lillehammer," Jirásek says. "No one expected a small Norwegian town to win."

Jirásek hopes Prague, like Lillehammer, will beat the odds and host a summer Olympic Games. He and 15 city officials, national politicians and sports figures have formed a committee to explore whether Prague should make a bid. They have their sights on the 2016, 2020 or 2024 games.

Unlike Lillehammer, Prague has name recognition. But it faces an uphill battle anyway because of its size. In fact, it may face worse odds than Lillehammer, population 25,000: Half of a Winter Olympics takes place in the mountains, and the international Olympic Committee (IOC) has a history of picking small ski towns. Lake Placid, with just 2,485 current inhabitants, hosted the 1932 and 1980 games.

Prague, with 1.2 million, is aiming for a Summer Olympics, and no city this small has hosted a summer games since Helsinki in 1952. Even Athens, the infrastructure-challenged sentimental winner of the 2004 games, has 4 million inhabitants.

"If Prague won, it would definitely be a smaller games," Jirásek said, "but sometimes smaller can be more beautiful."

Weighing the factors

The IOC has no rules on city size. And its leaders say they want to curb the growth of the Summer Games so African and South American countries will one day have a chance to host them. As they operate today, the games stretch thin even the world's largest cities. Leaders in New York City and London, for example, promised to build stadiums to bid for the 2012 games.

About 10,500 athletes compete in a typical Summer Games, compared to 2,500 in winter. Host cities must create an "Olympic village" to house them and their coaches and accommodations for 20,000 journalists. A city must have 50,000 hotel rooms for visitors, according to IOC rules, and sufficient public transportation to shuttle everyone around.

"Absorbing an extra 100,000 to 150,000 people can be difficult for a small city," says Gilbert Felli, executive director of the Olympic Games. "You don't feel it as much in a big city."

Felli says the small city label can become misleading for capital cities, because they often have more sports halls, rail links and hotels than their size alone warrants. Walther Troger, an IOC member from Germany, says Prague has a "renowned sports background" and one other advantage: international recognition.

"Small cities are disadvantaged because my colleagues know the big ones better," Troger said. "But Prague is well-known. The IOC has met there twice since I've been a member. Besides, our president has said the games should be scaled back. Picking Prague would be in line with that effort."

Jirásek says Prague may want to build a 50,000-seat Olympic stadium with 30,000 temporary seats, for example, rather than a stadium the size of Athens' (75,000 seats) or the one in Sydney (110,000), which hosted the games in 2000.

Prague's Strahov Stadium, built in 1926 atop Strahov hill in Prague 6, has seated up to 250,000 but is in such a poor state of repair that it's not considered viable for remodeling. The Evžen Rošický Stadium nearby, with a capacity of 22,000, is the city's next-largest option.

If a new stadium is built, says Jirásek, "It could later be used as a national football stadium."

The games themselves are also being scaled back. In July the IOC pared the number of Olympic events from 28 to 26, cutting softball and baseball. The cost of operating the games grew from roughly $1.4 billion (35 billion Kč) in Barcelona in 1992 to $2.4 billion in Greece. But Olympic officials say they expect the operating costs in Beijing (2008) and London (2012) to be about the same as those in Athens.

Ballooning investment?

Historically, the games also end up costing more than expected. Barcelona spent about $250 million more than predicted in 1989. But TV deals, sponsorships and other revenues mean cities usually break even on operating costs.

A greater expense, one for which costs are not directly recouped, is improvements to infrastructure. Although the IOC evaluates bids based on 11 criteria, including sports facilities, accommodations and public transport, it offers no money to host cities for upgrades. Greeks spent more than $10 billion, by some estimates, to make Athens Olympic-worthy, building stadiums, roads and a new railway.

The Czech government needs to spend about $24 billion to become a contender for the games, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. About $19 billion would go to projects already begun or planned, and to those that Olympic enthusiasts say the country needs anyway, such as a railway or metro connection to the airport, another jet runway and a beltway around Prague. Facilities such as the Olympic village and a new swimming center, which supporters argue can be put to use afterward, would take up the rest of the expense.

With private investment, sponsorship, TV contracts, ticket sales, spending by visitors and increased tax revenues taken into account, and disregarding the cost of infrastructure the city already needs, Czechs would be left with $2.3 billion — about $230 for every Czech or 6 percent of the state budget. Coming up with the money would require careful planning: To join and remain in the zone of countries that use the euro, the government must keep its budget deficit below 3 percent of the annual state budget. This year, the deficit is 5 percent. The government wants to join the euro zone by the end of the decade.

Often intangibles such as the international exposure for a city and national pride ultimately swing the deal, rather than hard numbers.

"It would be good for Czechs," Jirásek said. "It would raise our self-confidence."

With the sums involved, a bid would need both popular and political support. A poll by the DEMA agency in August 2004 showed 60 percent of Prague residents favor the bid. But a subsequent poll by the Median agency showed support at just 22 percent.

"The public has no desire to host the games," said Markéta Reedová, a city assemblywoman from the European Democratic Party. "I have no idea where the money would come from. It would be a huge headache."

Jirásek and his colleagues have to decide whether the city should bid for the 2016 by 2007, when applications to the IOC are due.