Olympic scout could help city's bid
Panel member lauded boxing event here in '07
The Olympic scout team coming to Chicago early next year was announced Thursday, with one familiar name that could help the city's bid to host the Summer Games in 2016.
The International Olympic Committee group, led by Moroccan gold medalist hurdler Nawal El Moutawakel, also includes C.K. Wu of Taiwan, president of the International Amateur Boxing Association, which held its world championships here last year.
Wu, an IOC member, called Chicago's boxing presentation at the University of Illinois at Chicago last fall "the best ever.'' The event drew more than 500 boxers from more than 100 countries and 41,445 fans.
El Moutawakel is no stranger to Middle America, either: She attended Iowa State University.
The Olympic assessment panel will spend two or three days here and in Tokyo; Madrid, Spain, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Chicago's rivals to host the Games. They'll visit venue sites and be briefed on the other aspects of each city's plan.
The panel will prepare a report on the strengths and weaknesses of each city for the 100 or so voting IOC members. But it will not make a bottom-line recommendation, officials said.
"Our role will be to assess their technical capabilities in a transparent and neutral way,'' El Moutawakel said in a statement.
The visit is considered one of three important steps for bid cities.
Chicago and its competitors also will make presentations to IOC members next June in Lausanne, Switzerland and before the voting in October 2009 in Copenhagen.
El Moutawakel, 46, also headed the IOC evaluation commission for the 2012 Olympics, which London won. At the time, she described herself as filling "the role of a conductor."
El Moutawakel was the first woman from a predominantly Muslim nation to win an Olympic medal when she won the 400-meter hurdles at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
Other members of the committee include Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli; IOC members Craig Reedie of Britain, Guy Drut of France and Mounir Sabet of Egypt; athlete representative Alexander Popov of Russia; Els van Breda Vriesman of the Netherlands, representing the international sports federations, and Australian Gregory Hartung of the International Paralympic Committee.