Decision day at last
BY LISA DONOVAN Staff Reporter
Today’s the day Chicago learns whether it takes home Olympic gold … or sits as an also-ran in the race to host the 2016 Summer Games.
Uniforms pressed? Check. Oprah in town? Check. President Obama? Check.
It will all come to a head at 11:57 a.m., Chicago time, when the city that has won the right to host the 2016 Olympics will be announced in a dramatic ceremony.
Mayor Daley’s Olympic bid team — and competitors from Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo — spent the day before the final vote furiously lobbying the International Olympic Committee members on the eve of their vote for the 2016 Games.
The star power remained high — even before President Obama got on a plane Thursday night en route to Copenhagen.
Want a picture with Oprah? She was holding court in a restaurant. Interested in talking to a Dream Teamer or a Perfect 10? David Robinson and Nadia Comaneci roamed the halls of their Copenhagen hotel. How about a meeting with the first lady? She was listening.
Michelle Obama has been on a marathon campaign to lobby as many of the 100-plus members of the IOC as possible. Thursday, she took a break from her hotel suite meetings with IOC members to attend the opening ceremony at Copenhagen’s dazzling opera house. Wearing a sleeveless, apricot-colored dress, she greeted a steady stream of members and other VIPs.
She also took time to have lunch with the queen of Denmark.
Since her arrival Wednesday, Mrs. Obama has been meeting with the IOC voters — perhaps dozens — in a suite at the Marriott, the official IOC hotel, where she can sit and talk.
