In a stunning development, Chicago was the first team eliminated in this morning’s vote on awarding the 2016 games.

It’s quite a slapdown – Barack Obama traveled all the way to Copenhagen to pitch the case for his adopted hometown and U.S. media was presenting Chicago as the frontrunner.

But this isn’t the worst development in the world. And not, in truth, a real shock.

The IOC already feels that the United States has too much control over the Olympics. When you go to the Olympics, the sense is that the entire operation is run by NBC.  There’s definitely some resentment among other IOC members about the American-centric feel about the Olympics.

Then there’s the fact that South America has never hosted the Olympics. For this to truly be a global sports movement, you can’t very well ignore an entire continent for over 100 years.  Rio de Janeiro will be involved in hosting the World Cup in 2014, so the city will have had a trial run for hosting  a major sports event. 

 Then there’s the harsh reality of the past two Olympic Games held in the U.S. – they were both total embarrassments.  Right now on CNN, A.D. Frazier – the former COO of the Atlanta Games – is speaking and he seems quite shocked at the rejection of Chicago. But he should probably take some of the blame.

 The Atlanta Games were a disaster of crash commercialism, poor organization, with a bombing and murder added to the mix. The sour taste from Atlanta lingers, 11 13 years after the Games were held.

The Salt Lake games were also a blight on the Olympic movement. Though the 2002 Winter Games were eventually well organized and smoothly run, the bribery scandal that led up to it was one of the dark moments of the Olympic movement.

After those two efforts, you get the feeling that the IOC would like to have nothing to do with U.S. cities for awhile. The members soundly rejected New York for the 2012 Games. And now Chicago.

Weather might have also played a role in the decision. The weather in Chicago in the summer is hot and humid. The weather in Rio (which I fully expect to be awarded the games in a few minutes) will be mild winter, with very little rain. It will be much better for the athletes  – not that the IOC usually cares about that, judging by their belief that the weather in Beijing last year was just fine.

This rejection of Chicago isn’t the worst thing, unless you’re Valerie Jarrett or the rest of  the Chicago contingent.  Who wants to take on the expense of the Olympics?  London’s cost for the 2012 Games is already up to $15.1 billion. It’s a financial disaster in the making.

Chicago doesn’t need the globlal platform like Beijing did (and that Rio covets), nor does it need rebuilt infrastructure – the way Athens did. Chicago, second city status or not, will be just fine without the Olympics.

Tags: Chicago, Obama, Olympics

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Olympics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.