Brazil will become the first South American country to host the Olympics, after the city of Rio de Janeiro was chosen to stage the 2016 Games.Rio won a majority of the 95 votes at the meeting in Copenhagen, eliminating Madrid in the final round. Tokyo and Chicago had been knocked out earlier.
Earlier, Brazil's president told IOC members "it was time time to light the Olympic flame in a tropical country".
Chicago's early exit was a surprise, with bookmakers making them favourites....
I would like to thank the Chicago City Council for being so extraordinarily reluctant to guarantee the costs of the games that even the IOC had to notice, despite later delivering and reaffirming said guarantee. (Also, no cookie for the city council for that craven cowardice and caving to Hizonner da mayor.) I would like to thank the USOC for being such outstanding dickwads that they announced an Olympic cable network, while having disputes with the IOC not only about that very selfsame network, but a major ongoing dispute about the amount of revenues allocated to the IOC by the USOC. I would like to thank President Obama for dinging his public celebrity and credibility by going to pitch Chicago at the selection committee meeting, as maybe now, he'll get on with the business of governing -- though, given how badly he's been doing in some aspects of that, maybe we'd be better off with a celebrity president, at that. But, honestly and genuinely, I would like to thank the IOC for deciding to go where no Games has gone before.
The actual vote totals were a bit ... surprising. From the Venerable Beeb:
First round: Madrid 28 votes; Rio de Janeiro 26; Tokyo 22; Chicago 18 (Chicago eliminated). Second round: Rio 46; Madrid 29; Tokyo 20 (Tokyo eliminated) Final round: Rio 66; Madrid 32 (Rio to host 2016 Games)
Rio came within two votes of winning the games in the second round; they picked up the entirety of Chicago's votes, minus one that drifted to Madrid, as well as two of Tokyo's first round votes. One theory being floated is that people who genuinely preferred Rio, but thought it would have a hard time against Chicago in the final round, instead voted for Tokyo in the first round, seeing that as the weakest bid. Once Chicago was eliminated, they could then vote for the site they preferred. That would explain Tokyo's slightly unusual loss of support in the second round, and Rio gaining so many votes. No way to tell for certain, of course; it's only a theory.
One might guess that I was not in favor of an Olympic Games in Chicago. Given lunacy like proposing demolishing a brand new gymnasium and swimming pool needed by a high school in favor of a velodrome they can't possibly use, or putting a "temporary" 80,000 seat stadium and possibly an additional aquatics center in Washington Park, currently on the National Register of Historic Places -- what sensible person could be in favor? (Besides, we know how well things work here when they alter structures on the National Register. Soldier Field looks like an alien flying saucer is having ongoing unlawful and indecent congress with a Roman coliseum -- and the coliseum is not at all happy about things, no it is not.) And frankly, this city does not need the opportunities for corruption that awarding Games contracts would create; we do quite nicely with that without additional impetus, thank you kindly! And watching hizzoner reward his friends and punish enemies with his TIF monies on a really epic scale -- as opposed to the smaller scale he actually uses -- would just be appalling.
Apart from that, one suspects that a summer games in Rio is going to be one of the most unspeakably fun things ever to see. Hopefully, they can avoid the pitfalls of Athens, which wound up with several essentially unfinished venues for its games; they've got nearly as much to build from scratch as Athens did. And as it stands, the US television networks bidding for the rights -- one assumes that NBC will scratch the eyes out of any other net that even thinks of trying to take its prize away -- while they would certainly have preferred a US games, for logistical reasons if nothing else, they're probably not that unhappy about Brazil landing the games. Rio sits in the Atlantic time zone, only an hour ahead of New York. They'll be able to get most events into a prime-time window without a lot of monkeying with the schedule; trying to tinker with the schedule to get prestige events in the primetime window had Seoul, Athens and Beijing all livid with NBC at one point or another.
One does wonder what Hizzoner Daley is going to do with himself, now that his big civic projects keep falling through. He genuinely does seem to want to leave the city with some Big Civic Thing as part of his legacy; he's in his late 60s, his time as mayor is going to wind down someday -- possibly soon -- and he wants to leave some Big Mark on the city. (Rather like a male dog taking the Biggest Leak EVER on the biggest tree it can find.) One would think that Millennium Park would do -- egregiously late and over budget it may have been, but it's generally considered a really spectacular park. But apparently he wants to do something more. His plans for redoing part of the subway have fallen through -- there's no way to complete his plans without building several major chunks of parallel tracks in places, and nobody has the money for that. For good or otherwise, the Games would have remade the south and west sides of the city, as well as a small part of Wisconsin. And now that's not going to happen. So what will he turn to next? Which part of the city will he lift his leg on to whiz out some boondoggle to say, "I wuz here!"?
Posted by iain at October 02, 2009 12:41 PM
