City Round 1 Round 2 Round 3
Rio de Janeiro 26 46 66
Madrid 28 29 32
Tokyo 22 20 —
Chicago 18 — —
Looks to me like the European delegates were for Madrid and everyone else found their way to Rio. I’m curious about the two delegates who didn’t vote for Tokyo again on the second ballet.
Will they hold the Olympics in August, or February (the latter being summer in that hemisphere)?
I have no clue, but looking at this temperature chart, it seems like they have summer all year long.
According to wikipedia, they are scheduled to be held from August 5-21.
Well, never mind.
The Sydney games were Sept 15 - Oct. 1 which is late summer early fall in the US so that would be late winter early spring down there. I would expect Rio to choose similar dates.
I agree since the bribes in Salt Lake City the IOC is actively avoiding any appearence of undue influence be it money or “star power.”
I wasn’t aware that heads of state were running around trying to influence things. That said, I’m not sure it actually weakens my argument, since I would note that apparently it didn’t work out so well for the international leaders/stars who did so. 
The USOC enraged the IOC by announcing plans to set up its own TV channel, which the IOC worried would cut into TV revenue for the Games. The USOC eventually backed off, but perhaps the damage had been done.
There was an article in a local free newspaper that Boston has been doing some preliminary planning to bid for 2020 in case Chicago lost. I’d be curious to see what they come up with in terms of planning, (rowing on the Charles? another marathon route?) although I don’t think the bid books are made public.
But if Chicago lost because of its antiquated subway, we’re pretty much toast.
Brazil’s president was there to make a presentation, too.
It’s obviously not the IOC’s position to intefere with the politics of a nation but I can’t think they will ever vote to hold the Olympic Games in a country that requires the fingerprints of not just all overseas competitors and officials but everyone wanting to attend as spectators.
Sure, it’s the USA’s business but this is not how the rest of the world works.
Has the USA been awarded any international sporting events since this policy came in?
Tell it to Lula and Pele.
All four cities would have made a great job of it, but I’m glad it went to Rio. Good luck to them.
The Japanese do not maintain prisons outside their borders, nor do they automatically suspect every non-white and non-Japanese person of being a terrorist.
I was just in Japan 3 weeks ago and it was easier/faster and more friendly getting into Japan than the USA (and I have a US Passport).
Even if I were in favor of having the Olympics here (which I’m not), I would still consider keeping terrorists OUT more important than letting athletes and tourists IN. Other countries aren’t as big of a target for the bad guys, but we are. It would be foolish to pretend it were otherwise…TRM
In a weird way, I think - and I say this with all due respect, you seem like a bright guy and you post up a lot of good stuff on this board - you’re demonstrating a very high level of Ameri-centric ignorance here, as are a few other posters.
I assure you the IOC does not give a tin shit about George W. Bush, and nobody outside the United States, save a few Canadians who get to see it on the news, cares a whit about “birthers” or “deathers” or, for the most part, even knows what the hell those are. The rest of the world have their own politics to care about, amazing though that might seem. They have governments and elections and their own laws and everything, I shit you not. They don’t care about what’s going on in town hall meetings in Shitheel, North Dakota.
More specifically to this issue, the IOC in particular quite obviously doesn’t give a frickin’ hoot about such things. Let me give you some objective evidence:
The 2008 Summer Games were held in China, a hideous dictatorship reknowned for human rights abuses that make Dubya look like Raoul Wallenberg, and where visitors are regularly tailed by secret police.
The 2014 Winter Games will be held in Russia, a kleptocracy of such preposterous corruption that it would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that their government also seems to really enjoy killing people.
If human rights and liberal happiness were the issue they’d hold the Games in Denmark every year.
But those aren’t the issues. This is how they make their decision:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
The IOC is a collection of pampered rich (mostly white) men, with the power concentrated in a cadre of rich specifically European white men, whose only interest in the common man is how fast the common man serves them their drinks and how effectively the common man carries their golf clubs. Not one of these men cares about being fingerprinted at O’Hare, because they come in on private jets and have lackeys fingerprinted for them while they’re being whisked off to five-star hotels. (The availability of luxury hotel rooms for IOC members and officials is, in fact, one of their critical measurements of prospective host cities.) Apart from their general effort to ensure the Games aren’t held in the same area twice in a row, the IOC’s absolute #1 concern is personal profit, maximizing bribery and graft; the city that can provide them with the most money, perks, and whores will almost always win.
We’ll never really know, but the truth is that Chicago probably got it ass kicked because of Salt Lake City. The bribery scandal around SLC very likely had a chilling effect on the Chicago bid committee’s ability to hand out the payola, since U.S. authorities were very likely more hip to the problem, so the USOC wasn’t able to really lay out the big time payoffs. It should tell you something that everyone figured Madrid and Tokyo were non players but they beat Chicago in the first round; the likelihood is that they came up with more cash and hookers than Chicago did, and that’s that.
You know why cities often the the Olympics on the second try? Because they learn that it’s not the bid or the cities’ particulars. It’s the money.
Money talks with the IOC and they know that a US Olympics brings in a lot of cash, much of that comes from US TV contracts. They won’t keep the US out for much longer.
Rio is pretty good for US TV because they are only 1 hour ahead of NYC which means they can have a lot of events live in US prime time. I’m sure they played that up in their bid .
Golf clap to RickJay. The U.S. is often a target for international criticism and that probably didn’t help Chicago any, but I’d bet that the particulars of the bids (or just the cash on the table) had a lot more to do with this than anyone’s politics.
As someone who is very familiar with the Chicago bid, I think the result is a surprising one. Chicago was the best bid from the point of view of actually having a top class Olympics. The infrastructure is most certainly there, much more so than Rio. What sank Chicago was the financing. All the other claims posted above are pretty wide off the mark. It had nothing to do with passports or even anti-Bush or Obama sentiment. The other countries governments were truly behind the bid. Chicago couldn’t really say that.
So the IOC went with the money. I think it’s a bad decision for a number of reasons. I don’t think Rio will have the infrastructure to host the games properly. They have a horrendous crime and poverty issue to deal with. Further, I think the Olympics are declining in popularity in the US and this certainly won’t help.