Paris is leading the race to host the 2012 Olympics, London Mayor Ken Livingstone said today. Weve closed the gap on Paris, but the truth is, Paris is still ahead, he told LBC radio. No city is close to a majority on the first ballot. The final decision, made by the International Olympic Committees 117 members in Singapore on July 6, is still up for grabs, he predicted. Madrid, New York and Moscow are also in the running with London in one of the strongest-ever Olympic host shortlists. Bookmakers William Hill have Paris as 4/7 favourite despite the pay strikes which crippled the transport network during this months IOC inspection visit. Londons bid, which endured bad publicity during the inspectors visit because Mr Livingstone likened a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard, is 11/8 second favourite. New York, which has problems over securing its main stadium, is at 10/1. Security concerns may effect Madrid and Moscows bids which respectively stand at 25/1 and 66/1. Mr Livingstone said: At most Paris has got about 30 votes. We have 25 votes and none of the other cities has more than 20, and weve got about 30 to 40 delegates yet to express an opinion. If in the end it is Paris and London, the people who voted for Moscow, New York and Madrid will say what is my second vote. It remains difficult to tell which way the IOC is swaying. Mr Livingstone said: The thing is these people are so skilled at not indicating which they favour and so when they are in any city, everyone thinks this is going really well because they are really good at avoiding bad press coverage. They should give us all a lesson.

Irina Slutskaya must hope her illness can be kept under control. Stephane Lambiel and Carolina Kostner suddenly must deal with the expectations of being medal favorites -- in Lambiel's case, a gold favorite -- instead of just contenders. Michelle Kwan must decide whether she can change her skating enough to become a title contender again. And Evgeny Plushenko must give up a few rubles to preserve his body for what he calls "the main season of my career." That would be the 2006 Olympic year, which Plushenko and the other protagonists of last week's World Figure Skating Championships began thinking about as soon as their competitions ended at Luzhniki Sports Palace. Everyone but Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, that is. The most decorated U.S. ice dancers in two decades expect to be training at their home rink in Detroit when the 2006 Winter Games take place in Turin, Italy. Belbin is a Canadian, Agosto a Chicagoan. The couple, who have skated together since 1998, can compete for the United States in everything but the Olympics, where citizenship is a prerequisite. They won't be in Turin unless Belbin's citizenship process is accelerated by a year, considered unlikely. Belbin and Agosto finished the worlds in second place, becoming the first U.S. ice dancers to win a world medal in 20 years and the first with silver in 30 years. Russians Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov won a second consecutive gold. Belbin, 20, and Agosto, 23, are so tired of questions about the Olympics they have developed a stock answer, which is, in Belbin's words, "We can achieve all we want without being at the Olympics." Figure skating's new judging system has changed the years of farcical marking in which the next dance champion is the one nearest the top when the current champion retires, as Navka and Kostomarov are expected to do after 2006. Russia's Plushenko had looked like the next Olympic champion until knee, back and groin injuries combined to make him vulnerable. He cited the groin problem in announcing his withdrawal before Thursday's final. He was third after the short program. "It was necessary to withdraw and better prepare and recover for next season," Plushenko told Russian TV. Earlier in the week, Plushenko said he was out of shape because injuries kept him off the ice for most of the time between the European championships in late January and the world meet. They did not keep him from skating in a Swiss tour the week after the Europeans, nor will they keep him from the Champions on Ice tour that begins Friday in the U.S. The shows pay. If Plushenko, the 2003-2004 world champion, is putting short-term green before Olympic gold, Switzerland's Lambiel, the new world champion, may benefit from that again next year. Italy's Kostner, the bronze medalist, is another story. She fell apart under the pressure of skating the 2005 European championships in Turin. One can only imagine how much that pressure will increase now that she is the first Italian woman to win a world medal in 27 years. And what of the fourth-place Kwan, off the world podium for the first time since 1995, badly outskated by Russia's victorious Slutskaya? Of Kwan's three programs in Moscow, one was competent, one mediocre, one terrible. Even some of the swooning fans who frequent the Internet's "Michelle Kwan Forum" were compelled to admit she has been treading frozen water for several seasons. Kwan has won Olympic silver and bronze and another quest for gold could be as unsettling as Ahab chasing the white whale in a leaky boat. She managed only seven triple jumps combined in two free skates at worlds, and even her once-breathtaking spirals were ho-hum. "I have a lot to learn," Kwan said, referring to the new system. The bigger issue is whether an old champion can learn new tricks when she can't do many of her old ones.