Marathon debacle won't affect 2016 bid: experts
As tragic and embarrassing as it was, Sunday's marathon debacle will have no impact on Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, experts said Monday.
Chaotic images of wailing ambulance sirens, water shortages and a race cut short by record heat and humidity, the death of a 35-year-old runner and hospitalization of hundreds of others are obviously not what Chicago wanted to project around the world.
(AP file)
Will marathon debacle affect 2016 Olympic bid?
But Olympic experts insist that the black eye for Chicago would be short-lived.
For one thing, Olympic marathons bear no resemblance to the Chicago Marathon. Olympic marathons are confined to less than 200 elite runners with a maximum qualifying time of two hours and 22 minutes. Olympic marathons have been held without incident in even greater heat and humidity than Sunday's 35,867-person field that included thousands of amateurs.
"All things are possible in the world of Olympic bidding. But, it seems a remote possibility that a freakish event of nature is going to play a role in a vote that's two years from now when so many other things will happen by then," said Alan Abrahamson, a columnist for NBC Sports and NBCOlympics.com who is covering his fifth Olympic bid contest.
Ed Hula, who closely covers the Olympics for aroundtherings.com, noted that all of the elite runners completed the Chicago Marathon without incident.
"Unless this is a chronic problem -- unless Chicago has a series of incidents that show its emergency response teams are not able to handle crises that pop up -- it's a blip, if anything, on the bid," he said.
Carey Pinkowski, executive race director of the Chicago Marathon, argued that Sunday's chaos would end up boosting Mayor Daley's Olympic dream.
"This is a great example. We were put in an adverse situation . . . The [city] departments we worked with stepped up in a grand way," Pinkowski said.
Contributing: Jim Ritter
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