Chicago loses Olympics to Rio
South American lure too much for U.S.
COPENHAGEN — Chicago got the Olympic elimination blues handed to it in shocking fashion this morning — getting bumped out of the race in the first round as Rio de Janiero went on to win the Summer Games for 2016.
The Brazilian city made a passionate pitch for the 2016 Summer Games and will now make history as the first South American city to host the global sporting event.
(Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times)
Madrid: 28
:Rio: 26
Tokyo: 22
Chicago: 18
Round Two
Rio: 46
Madrid: 29
Tokyo: 20
Round Three
Rio: 66
Madrid: 32
The International Olympic Committee voted down Madrid, Tokyo and Chicago, a stunning defeat for Mayor Daley and President Obama — both used to winning campaigns — who traveled here in hopes of winning the Games.
Some believed Obama’s charisma would lock in the Games, but Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is fierce and passionate and has been telling reporters for weeks that his country needs Games and that it will transform the Olympics.
In seven years, the Olympics will unfold in the seaside city of beautiful beaches and beautiful people, with Christ the Redeemer reaching out from Corcovado mountain to bless the athletes below.
But it isn’t all carnivale and samba. In an evaluation of the four bid cities, the IOC raised red flags about high crime in the city and poor air quality.
Chicago 2016’s bid leader, Patrick Ryan talked a few weeks ago about the possibility of losing this race. He said it all — three years and $70 million in fund-raising to cover expenses — would have been worth it.
“Chicago is so much better known and understood than we started.”
He says 44 million tourists visit Chicago each year, with 1.5 million from outside the country and 11 percent from Indiana.
“I don’t know what the increase in international exposure has been — there’s a metric on it — but it’s huge,” he said last month.
Many people had assumed Chicago would be a finalist. But International Olympic Committee members eliminated it only hours after Obama and his wife, Chicago native Michelle Obama, urged them to send the Summer Games to Obama’s adopted hometown. Obama had put his personal prestige on the line and his political capital at risk when he decided late in the competition to go to Copenhagen and make a personal appeal.
Chicago had seemed to pick up momentum in the last few days, with many IOC members seemingly charmed by Mrs. Obama, who came to Copenhagen ahead of her husband. But when IOC president Jacques Rogge announced the first vote’s results, while the Obamas were flying home on Air Force One, Chicago was out.
In making his pitch, the president had said that a nation shaped by the people of the world “wants a chance to inspire it once more.” Never before had a U.S. president made such an in-person appeal, and Obama’s critics will doubtlessly see the vote as a sign of his political shortcomings.