2nd-guessing: Was it finances? Politics? Dull pitch?
COPENHAGEN -- What torpedoed the Windy City's Olympic dreams?
For all the talk of anti-American sentiment, a poor final pitch by Chicago and overall bad relations between the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee, one IOC member said Saturday it came down to two things:
South America had never hosted the Games before, making Rio de Janeiro the obvious pick.
"We want these Games to go all over the world," said Lamine Diack of Senegal.
And Diack didn't buy Chicago's $4.8 billion financial package: He wasn't comfortable with the city's plan to pay for the 2016 Summer Games with private donations, turning to public dollars only after insurance kicked in. Relying on donations is dangerous in a global recession, he said. And the City Council's unanimous backing of the bid came too late.
"The other cities had the strong backing of the government," Diack said Saturday.
Still, that's not to say that politics didn't play a role in the secretive vote. The United States Olympic Committee has had a testy, even distant relationship with the IOC after spats over revenue sharing and a planned USOC television network -- factors that may have tanked Chicago's plan.
"They are simply not part of the Olympic family," said Ed Hula, who runs the Olympics Web site aroundtherings.com.
Bob Ctvrtlik, a former IOC member and the USOC's vice chairman of international relations, took some of the blame, saying, "The United States within the Olympic movement hasn't engaged as well as we could have."
That's a problem simply because of the makeup of the IOC: the United States has just two members; Europe has the largest voting bloc, with 47 of the 106 members. Madrid won the first round with 28 votes, while Chicago garnered just 18 votes.
Chicago 2016 didn't escape criticism Saturday. One well-regarded global sports strategist and consultant said Chicago's final pitch -- even with the Obamas -- was just the latest example of the bid's dull and scripted campaign.
"It was corporate America all the way," said the consultant, who has worked on numerous Olympics bids but asked not to be named. He said everyone from Chicago 2016 CEO Patrick Ryan to Mayor Daley and even the president was stiff and seemingly unaware they weren't politicking in an American election, but in the international sports world.
"When the president said, 'I urge you to vote for America,' I thought, 'Oh no.' How do you have one of the most dynamic speakers say these things? It was unnatural," he said.
Some observers said Chicago should have focused on getting its athletic star power -- Michael Jordan, not Oprah Winfrey -- to Copenhagen. Soccer stare Pele spent the week in Copenhagen energizing Brazil's bid.
Still, even IOC members couldn't truly break down the vote a day later.
South African IOC member Sam Ramsamy said it would take a few months of in-depth study of how the votes stacked up "if you really want to understand."
At this point, most seem ready to move on.
Contributing: AP