Chicago never saw haymaker coming

OLYMPICS 2016: TOM HUMPHRIESwitnessed a day of high drama as Rio de Janeiro won the race to stage the 2016 Games

PERHAPS BETTER than anybody else who was present in the Bella Centre in Copenhagen yesterday Mayor Richard Daley should have been aware of the old maxim to the effect that you can’t beat city hall.

As a day of presentations and voting unfolded as high drama it became increasingly evident that the IOC leadership was backing the bid of Rio de Janeiro and had some big scores to settle with the American Olympism generally.

Chicago, whose vote counting machine was predicting the bid to be in the bag even as late as lunchtime yesterday, never saw the haymaker coming. The American bid ended in the first round with just 18 votes. Out-thought and outflanked by all their rivals.

The IOC went for the double whammy, punishing perceived American arrogance in the arena of Olympic administration and choosing to give its president Jacques Rogge the chance to leave a legacy by being the first president to bring the Games to South America.

It was Rogge’s day and Rio’s day but the headlines will concern another president and another city. Barack Obama walked into somebody else’s fight yesterday and got slashed. The IOC delivered an extraordinary repudiation to the US Olympic Committee and to Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago when eliminating Chicago in the first round of voting. For Daley and Obama the embarrassment will be acute.

Chicago’s first-round humiliation came after the city had been the favourites pretty much all the way from the starters pistol to Copenhagen. It was felt this week that Chicago was neck and neck with Rio de Janeiro for the right to bring the Games back.

As the morning unfolded however the sense began to grow that the Chicago bid was in serious trouble despite throwing the trump card of a US president and his wife onto the table. “Chicago hadn’t got the core vote that they thought they had,” said Irish IOC member Pat Hickey afterwards. “They felt they would have a lot more than 18 votes. In fairness the Rio presentation was head and shoulders above everything. A great presentation and a great case for bringing the Games to new territory. I was there for the Pan American Games two years ago and it worked very well. No real problems.”

The setback is a severe embarrassment for the Obama administration which drew domestic criticism for taking time out from major domestic concerns to repay political favours in Chicago. Had Obama not come to Copenhagen and Chicago had suffered defeat Obama would have drawn criticism anyway but to have made the trip to Denmark and prostrated himself in front of the IOC is a significant humiliation.

“Michelle Obama was brilliant,” said Hickey. “She spoke very emotionally, with genuine emotion about growing up in the south side of Chicago and how her father taught her how to box. She said she has a mean right hook better than any boy in her neighbourhood. That got a good laugh.”

Immediately after the Chicago presentation President Obama joked to the media that the only thing he was disappointed about in the presentation was that “they arranged for me to follow Michelle. That’s always bad.” He was joking but in this case he was right.

Obama, by contrast to his wife, looked tired and read flatly from a prepared script. He spoke about his own experiences within his adopted city.

“You see, growing up, my family moved around a lot. And I never really had roots in any one place or culture or ethnic group. Then I came to Chicago. And on those Chicago streets I worked alongside men and women who were black and white; Latino and Asian; people of every class and nationality and religion. I came to discover that Chicago is that most American of American cities, but one where citizens from more than 130 nations inhabit a rich tapestry of distinctive neighbourhoods.

“Each one of those neighborhoods – from Greektown to the Ukrainian Village; from Devon to Pilsen to Washington Park – has its own unique character, history, song, and sometimes language. But each is also a part of our city – one city – a city where I finally found a home.

The sentiments were interesting but the delivery was uncharacteristically wooden and Obama only sparked when asked a question about visa entry requirements to the US during the Games. Speaking off the cuff he engaged briefly with his audience, stating that one of the legacies he hoped the Games would leave is a reminder that “America at its best is open to the world.”

During the break after Chicago’s presentation and QA had finished Obama lingered in the hall speaking in person to IOC members but the sense of disappointment was palpable among an audience which had been expecting to be made swoon.

Worse perhaps than Obama’s loss of face is the fate of Mayor Richard Daley, the scion of the city’s legendary ruling political family who had hoped that a successful candidature would spark the beginnings of a bounce back from a series of corruption scandals which have beset his administration.

Daley is due for re-election in 2011 but in the absence of an Olympics to plan for he may choose to end a long political career. Chicago’s final presentation yesterday was lacklustre and without theme. Despite solid backing all the way through Chicago never reached out enough to those voters who might have swung back to them in the second or third rounds.

Chicago’s campaign suffered too from the spin-off created by the US Olympic Committee’s ongoing battles with the IOC. Negotiations are ongoing concerning the cut the USOC takes from the top of all Olympic revenues and the USOC’s threat a couple of months ago to establish its own Olympic television network, though having nothing to do with Chicago, left many IOC members with a desire to put the Americans back in their box.

The bid from Rio, however, crackled with energy from start to finish and in baseball parlance the Brazilians seemed to have knocked the ball out of the park with yesterday’s presentation. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva spoke with extemporised passion about the bid and about Rio and the video reel reached out to the IOC’s sense of itself by showing kids playing sport in the barrios of the city.

Two punches in particular landed well. A chart showing the sites of all previous Olympiads, winter and summer, revealed South America as almost the final frontier. Thirty celebrations of the Games have taken place in Europe, five in Asia, two in Oceania, and 12 in North America. South America has never hosted a Games.

And then in the question and answer session afterwards the governor of the state of Rio, Sergio Cabral, was asked what he hoped the legacy of a Rio Games would be. He spoke not of infrastructure or world peace or an end to all poverty but of the people of Brazil and South America. “That they would have self-esteem. Self-esteem for the people of Brazil and the whole continent of South America.”

The IOC, a body with an excess of self-esteem, liked the idea of granting self-esteem to an entire continent.

Taking the USOC down a peg or two in the process was just a pleasing bonus.