Vancouver may have won its bid to host the 2010 Winter Games, but it wasn't the easy victory that had been predicted.

"It was nerve racking," Prime Minister Jean Chretien told CTV News, moments after Vancouver was named host city for the 2010 Olympics.

"There's more uncertainty about these things because you really don't know. Everybody tells you it's in the bag, but you really don't know," the prime minister said, in an apparent reference to reports ahead of the decision that said Vancouver had a lock on the Games.

On Tuesday, former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch said he'd heard that Vancouver was the top choice -- news that had members of Vancouver's bid team in a self-congratulatory mood hours ahead of the actual voting.

But once the ballots were cast, it appears that confidence -- though ultimately realized -- may have been premature.

In the first ballot, Pyeongchang, South Korea had 51 votes -- just three short of the 54 required for a city to claim an immediate victory. Vancouver had 40 votes, while Salzburg came in a surprising third place with 16 and was eliminated.

"If you look at the numbers in the first round, Korea was very close to taking it," said former downhill skier Steve Podborski. "I'm surprised at how close somebody did come to winning it."

On the second ballot, Vancouver appeared to pick up most of Salzburg's support, narrowly winning the decision by a vote of 56 to 53.

"It was really shocking," said Canadian IOC member Paul Henderson. "If almost all the votes from Salzburg hadn't have gone for Vancouver, the Koreans would have won."

John Furlong, Vancouver's bid president, said his team didn't try to lobby for the support of Salzburg's proponents. He added that he ultimately believed Vancouver had the strongest chance if the decision did come down to a runoff vote.

"Sometimes in the first round, things happen for different reasons than you think -- there's loyalty voting and so on," he said. "But we always thought that if it went to a second round that we would pick up some support."

As many as 113 IOC members were elegible to vote on the bids, including many from countries that have little or no interest in the Winter Games.

There had been suggestions that Europe sent its votes to Canada to help blunt New York's charge for the 2012 Summer Games. Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow have all declared they will bid for those Games.

"There are several IOC members that don't want to go back to the United States,'' Henderson said before the final announcement.

Austrian bid spokesman Michael Schuen was clearly not pleased that Salzburg may have lost over regional reasons and not the merit of its excellent ski courses.

"They don't always go for the best bid," he told reporters. "We always knew we would have to overcome certain, let's say, politics."

"We didn't expect to fall out after the first vote," added Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel. "There are many reasons for that ... the geographical and geopolitical situation."

IOC President Jacques Rogge denied that politics had anything to do with the Vancouver win.

"This is pure speculation,'' he snapped. "This so-called continental rotation, we don't believe in that."

"In little more than 100 members, 40 have participated in an Olympic Games," he added. "We have 25 Olympic champions in our ranks. And they will vote for sport. They will not vote for politics."

Many believed that since the IOC likes to fairly distribute the Olympics to different regions, it was North America's turn. The 2004 Summer Olympics will be held in Athens, and the 2006 Winter Games are in Turin, Italy -- just a few hours drive from Salzburg. Asia has the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Canada has hosted the Olympics twice before. Calgary held the Winter Games in 1988 and Montreal played host to the 1976 Summer Games.