Be proud, Chicago

Tribune Staff Reporter

So that’s all there is.

Chicago in 2016 will watch the Summer Olympic Games on television along with the most of the world.

Chicago lost. We don’t like losing. We don’t like being embarrassed either, which, let’s admit, was the near-universal reaction to being knocked out in the first round of voting by the International Olympic Committee.

But we’ll be fine.

Bidding for an Olympiad forced Chicago, its leaders and its citizens, to focus on what works and what doesn’t. It made all of us think to the future how this city should capitalize on its assets: the lakefront, the neighborhoods, the parks–and sports and kids. This process also energized the concept of public/private partnerships here.

That work won’t go to waste. There will be no Olympic Village on the site of Michael Reese Hospital. But the city owns that land now and Mayor Richard Daley has promised to develop it into a new neighborhood anyway. Do that, Chicago–and preserve Reese’s landmark Walter Gropius buildings.

A Chicago Olympics would have spotlighted the city’s single greatest physical asset–that glorious lakefront. It was to be the centerpiece of the games. It’s still the centerpiece of Chicago. Take it to the next level, Chicago. Complete the public access where it doesn’t exist. Build the pedestrian walkways that would have anchored the village to the lake. The lakefront is the city’s crown jewel. Polish it. ƒp This bid turned a spotlight on the city’s transportation infrastructure, a weak point. The region’s rails and roads need capital investment to handle the demands of a growing metropolis. Invest the money, Chicago, Olympics or no.

That includes finishing the unfinished part of the O’Hare International Airport expansion: Build a western access road; just about every local transportation study for decades has listed that as a priority to ease the bottleneck at the eastern entrance to the airport. Fixing transportation also includes easing Chicago’s freight rail gridlock. And it includes making the city’s rapid transit system work better and more efficiently.

The greatest legacy of this bid could have been as simple and profound as this: kids and sports. An Olympiad held the potential to nudge them off the couch, away from junk food, TV and video games, the gangs and their violence. Chicago founded World Sport Chicago to boost the bid, but it can and should be a powerful force in the years ahead to promote active, healthy lifestyles.

Chicago is an attractive destination for talented, educated young people. Its location makes it a hub, as accessible to Mexico City and Mumbai as to Milwaukee. But Chicago won’t reach its potential unless it fosters a climate more conducive to business investment and entrepreneurial development. A new scheme for taxing and public spending would greatly help protect Chicago from an erosion of employers. Jobs, jobs and more jobs will be the city’s salvation.

Businesses that locate and grow here pay taxes and all those newly employed people pay taxes, too.

Olympiad or no, Chicago needs to become a perpetual mecca for small businesses in particular. Their energetic potential is explosive. Make it so easy and welcoming, Chicago, for them to start up here that they can’t imagine going elsewhere. This means shifting a mind set that currently sees them as a source of fees, fines and other revenues, only secondly of growth and opportunity.

This city has reinvented itself before, without the provocation of an Olympiad.

Chicago was a “City on the brink” in 1981 when the Tribune series with that title looked at this metropolis and its bleak post-industrial prospects. The world was changing; grit and brawn didn’t matter so much anymore. The harsh competition of globalization was dawning; structural decline was palpable in cities ill-equipped for this rigorous economic game. By the mid-’80s, Chicago’s ugly racial politics and its City Council wars made the city a national embarrassment, famously jabbed by The Wall Street Journal as “Beirut on the lake.” All arrows pointed south except the jobless rate. That soared.

Why didn’t Chicago plummet like so many heartland cities in what the Tribune series called “an arc of economic crisis”? Partly because of an innate spirit that created a city out of a swampy onion patch–and then improbably promised to host the world at a glittering gala just 22 years after the Great Fire of 1871. Hence the wildly successful Columbian Exposition.

Partly, too, because of can-do hucksterism: See a problem. Solve a problem. Make a buck.

And partly because of leadership–political, civic, business, cultural. At critical moments, powerful Chicagoans have reached high. Why not? What did they have to lose?

Pinched vision isn’t this city’s civic heritage–from Montgomery Ward’s sacred lakefront park to Daniel H. Burnham’s “Make no little plans” to Mayor Daley’s crowd-pleasing Millennium Park.

Chicagoans love their city but see its warts every day. We know its challenges and its weaknesses. And we can’t forget how this steel and stone metropolis, rising like a castle from the flat expanse of the lake’s broad basin, astonishes newcomers. Its architecture, museums, parks, flowers are always a revelation, as is the richness of its neighborhoods.

Chicago is a world-class city. The Olympics wouldn’t have changed that. But the games would have showcased this city for the world in a way no other event could. Now it’s up to Chicago, its leaders, citizens and businesses to achieve that at a time when competition for jobs, brains, talent and investment is as likely to come from New Delhi as New York.

Some Chicagoans are celebrating today because the XXXI Olympiad won’t disrupt their summer of 2016; many others are disappointed. It would have been a grand party in our own front yard. But it wasn’t to be.

It’s time to get back to what we do best: See a problem. Solve a problem. Make a buck.

Be proud, Chicago. You went for gold.

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CHICAGO ELIMINATED IN FIRST ROUND

– Kathy Bergen and Philip Hersh

Chicago has been eliminated in the first round of International Olympic Committee voting, leaving Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo in the running for the 2016 Summer Games as second-round voting begins.

There were 95 votes in the first round because two members, NHL player Saku Koivu of Finland (currently in preseason training with his new team, the Anaheim Ducks) and Alpha Diallo of Guinea could not make it to Copenhagen.

Others not voting in the first round included the seven members from the countries with candidates (two each from the U.S., Japan and Brazil; one from Spain); Kun Hee Lee of South Korea, who has been suspended pending judicial action involving him in South Korea; and IOC President Jacques Rogge, who does not vote.

As soon as a city is eliminated, members from that country can vote.

Under IOC rules, in case of a tie during a round when only two candidates remain, the IOC president can vote or ask the executive board to break it. There is a runoff in case of a tie between the two lowest vote-getters in an earlier round.

Officials pick out clear plastic balls from a bowl filled with such balls, each with a number, and assign a number to each city for voting purposes. Voting is electronic, a secret ballot. The numbers are No. 8 for Tokyo, No. 9 for Madrid, No. 4 for Chicago and No. 7 for Rio.

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2016 Olympics: Cliffhanger in Copenhagen fills air with electric anticipation

Bid teams are nervous about close vote, and Chicago’s star, Oprah Winfrey, creates a stir wherever she goes

By Kathy Bergen and Philip Hersh Tribune reporters

COPENHAGEN – — Eight-hundred-year-old Copenhagen, a former fishing colony that is now a blend of the fine and the funky, the historic and the sleekly modern, is a city on edge.

And the war of nerves is most evident among an unusual group of visitors: the 2016 Olympic bid teams from Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo, and their supporters, who are sweating out a vote Friday by the International Olympic Committee.

With this being the most evenly matched four-way Olympic bid race in recent memory, even those used to high tension are feeling the strain.

“I’m a little anxious,” Olympian basketball player and former NBA star David Robinson, a Chicago supporter, admitted at a bid backers cocktail party held just as the IOC was officially opening its annual meeting. “A lot of people have put in a ton of time in the last three years and a lot is riding on it for the city.”

Contributing to the war of nerves is the difficulty in predicting an outcome, not just because each candidate city has a strong bid, but because the IOC is notoriously hard to read and the elimination rounds of voting result in quickly shifting alliances as cities are dropped.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero tempered his optimism Thursday morning with recollections of the vote for the 2012 Summer Games, when Madrid was the top vote-getter in the second round of voting in Singapore, only to ultimately wind up third. London squeaked past Paris, the favorite to win those games.

“When that concluded, I took a reflection,” Zapatero said. “The thing is, with this type of election, there are different faces on it as bids are eliminated. It’s very hard to predict who will win the final vote.”

And it is hard to steer clear of the electric undercurrents in town. With sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, police cars have been whisking heads of state around town. Security guards at posh hotels have kept entrances cordoned off when VIPs were expected.

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Former IOC President Samaranch Asks For The 2016 Olympic Games In Madrid At Final Presentation

Madrid made the fourth and final Olympic bid presentation of the day to IOC members in Copenhagen. Following is a summary.

Spanish IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. took the podium first and introduced the bid delagation.

Madrid Mayor Alberto Ruiz Gallardin took the stage next.

The Mayor said that this is the second consecutive bid for Madrid. He said that in sport there is never failure, you can never give up. He said he and his team will stay to support the Madrid Olympics for the next seven years.

A video portraying Madrid as multicultural showed people of different nationalities and different cultures living in Madrid.

Mercedes Coghen, CEO of Madrid 2016 spoke next. She spoke about her Olympic experience in Field Hockey.

“We believe in our games with the human touch.”

“Thanks to our location and time zone we offer a global Games.”

A video showed a visualization of the venue plan as described by Coghen and others. The empasis was on the bid’s planned legacy, environmental plans and the compact, efficient transportation plans.

Esperanza Agguirre, President of the Regional Government of Madrid spoke about her governments committment to the Games and emphasized Olympic values and her goal to change the life of citizens of Madrid.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, President of the Spanish Government was next on stage. He spoke of infrastructure that is already built and ready.

“Our candidacy is reliable. It is reliable because it is united politically.”

“We have listened to everything the IOC has suggested.”

“I commit to a project which will allow the spreading of athletics for all young people.”

A video was shown of people “relaying” an envelope from Madrid, across Europe and finally to the Bella Center in Copenhagen resolved into an actual handoff of a letter to the IOC signed by the people of Madrid. It contained a message hope and dreams for the 2016 Olympics.

Alejandro Blanco, President of the Spanish Olympic Committee was next on the podium and he spoke of a games designed by and for the athletes.

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Tokyo 2016 Olympic Bid Presentation Emphasizes Great Spirit Despite Lack of Emotion

Tokyo made the second presentation to IOC members, at 10:30 AM local time in Copenhagen.  Following is a summary.

A fifteen year-old girl, gymnast, speaking in English, took the stage first.

“I’m not a head of state”, she says.

She described, with images, climate change, discrimination, doping and challenges in the world of sport.

Japanese International Olympic Committee member Chiharu Igaya intoduces new Prime Minister ofJapan and others on the panel.

Newly-elected Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama took the stage.

“We really can make the world a better place, such is the magic of the Olympic Games.” he said.

He described great efforts by the bid to impact world environmental concerns.

A video was shown describing Japan’s efforts in the Olympic movement over the past 100 years, including the 1964 Tokyo Games.

Shintaro Ishihara, Governor of Tokyo, spoke about development in his region and cooperation with the Olympics.

A video showing typical people becoming involved in sport on a journey toward the Olympics and Paralympics

Ichiro Kono, Chairman and CEO of Tokyo 2016 took the podium.

“When Japanese people make a promise, we deliver.”

“You’ve asked us to show more emotion.”

“But we are full are spirit! We will deliver everything we say.”

In French, the Kono spoke about public opinion in Tokyo – he said the evaluation visit was showed on major TV networks and since the IOC poll, public support has gone beyond 80%.

Japanese athletes, speaking in french and english, described the venue plans for the bid complete with visuals.

Yuko Arakido promised to teach athletes and visitors to the Tokyo Games karaoke.

Paralympian Junichi Kawai further described venues and commented on their accessibility – he described his dreams for the Games with great emotion.

Koji Murofushi, Tokyo 2016 Executive Board member presented more venue information.

Mikako Kotani, Tokyo 2016 Athletes Commission, described the goal of “setting the stage for athletes”.

She presented a video showing the Games being staged in the center of “the largest city in the world”. It described technology, the environment and visitor experience.

Tokyo 2016 Vice President Tsunekazu Takeda took the podium described the Games support for athletes and NOC’s. He offered the IOC his committment to work under their leadership.

“Please give us the opportunity to host these Games – I ask this from my heart.” Takeda said.

Kono took the stage again to discuss goals for anti-doping and peace in sport. He described uniting the youth of the world through the Olympics.

A video was presented showing young people around the world participating in sports.

Shun-ichiro Okano, Executive Board mamber made a short statement asking for support from the IOC along with Kono.

The floor was opened for questions.

Kono addressed a question about public support, reiterating that the rate has risen to over 80%

Kono also answered a question from Prince Albert of Monaco regarding the size of the land for the Olympic Village. He said he believed that it exceeded the requirements of the IOC.

The meeting was adjourned.

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Obama lobbies IOC to pick Chicago for 2016

President, first lady make presentations to IOC on Friday

COPENHAGEN – In a hometown pitch for the world’s biggest sporting event, President Barack Obama lobbied Olympic leaders to give the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago, saying the U.S. “is ready and eager to assume that sacred trust.”

The president and his wife, fellow Chicagoan Michelle Obama, put their capital behind an enormous campaign to win the Olympics bid. Never before had a U.S. president made such an in-person appeal.

“I urge you to choose Chicago,” Obama told members of the International Olympic Committee.

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“And if you do — if we walk this path together — then I promise you this: The city of Chicago and the United States of America will make the world proud,” the president said.

Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo have been making their cases to the IOC for more than a year, but many IOC members were believed to be undecided about which city they would vote for Friday. Some said they might not decide until after the cities made their final presentations in Copenhagen.

Both Obamas spoke on deeply personal terms about Chicago, the city at the center of the world’s spotlight so many times, including in November when Barack Obama won the White House and stood proudly with his family.

The president described Chicago as a place of diversity and warmth.

“Chicago is a place where we strive to celebrate what makes us different just as we celebrate what we have in common,” he said. “It’s a place where our unity is on colorful display … It’s a city that works from its first World’s Fair more than a century ago to the World Cup we hosted in the nineties, we know how to put on big events.”

For all the anticipation surrounding Obama’s appearance in Copenhagen, his arrival at the IOC meeting was decidedly subdued.

The 100-plus committee members, who had already been warned not show bias during the presentations, sat silently as the Obamas walked into the Bella Center with the rest of 12-member Chicago delegation.

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Obama: ‘Most American of American cities’

President Obama described himself as a “passionate supporter” of the Games and as “a proud Chicagoan.”

He said he looked forward to welcoming the world to the shores of Lake Michigan and America in 2016. “America is ready and eager,” he said.

He described his own association with and love for the city, noting it was the place where he met his wife. He cited Chicago’s ethnic diversity with “a rich tapestry of neighborhoods.”

Chicago is the “most American of American cities,” with more than 130 nations represented among its population, he said.

He harkened to his own background, how his family moved around a lot, how he lived without roots in Hawaii and Indonesia, but found a true home in Chicago 25 years ago.

“I came to Chicago, and on Chicago’s streets I worked along side men and women who were black and white, Latino and Asian. People in every class and nationality and religion,” he said.

He concluded by saying Chicago would make the IOC proud.

2:29 a.m. Michelle Obama: ‘Choose Chicago, choose America’

Michelle Obama, appearing slightly nervous at the outset, made an intensely personal presentation, talking about how the Olympics inspired her as a young girl and would do the same for the present generation of children.

She said the Games would be used “to bring us together” and “change lives all over the world.”

She said the Olympics “would light up lives across the world.”

“I was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, not  far from where the Games will open and close… Sports are what brought a community together,” she said.

“We picked sides not on who you were, but what you could bring to the game.”

Sports, she said, is what she shared with her father.

‘I’m asking you to choose Chicago. I’m asking you to choose America,” she said.

2:21 a.m. Chicago called a good place for athletes

Brian Clay, the 2008 decathlon champion, and Linda Mastandrea, director of Paaralympic Sport and Accessibility for the city’s 2016 bid, said the city will be a good place for athletes to compete.

The cited the beauty of the city’s parks and its lakefront.

The city’s Olympic Village would put 90 percent of the athletes within 15 minutes of their venues, with spacious rooms and a private beach, Mastrandrea said.

–Kathy Bergen

2:15 a.m. More virtues: Corporate connections, shopping

Bid team leader Patrick Ryan stressed the city’s economic strength, noting the Midwest is home to hundreds of major corporations. The city, he said, will provide “fresh territory for expansion of sponsorships.”

He said the city’s shopping rivaled that of London and New York, and called Chicago “a safe city.”

“For the next seven years, we will focus exclusively on being your committed partners,” he said. “If so honored, we will begin tomorrow.”

–Kathy Bergen

2:07 a.m. Daley: ‘Chicago will deliver’

Mayor Daley was third up.

“Chicago will deliver,” he promised, “because in Chicago we just don’t talk about what we will do, we do it.”

He said the city’s bid had a “a full government guarantee with the enthusiastic appeal of the city’s leaders.”

“If you award us the Games, we will be your best partners,” he pledged.

At the beginning of his presentation, he cited Chicago’s connection to the Olympics through two of its premier athletes, Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf, who competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

He noted they competed on behalf of a nation that would not give them, as African-Americans, basic rights. “Why? Because the Olympic Games represent something bigger,” he said.

--Kathy Bergen

1:55 a.m. Presentation begins with ‘Sweet Home Chicago’

Chicago has begun its presentation to the International Olympic Committee with a brief introduction by United States Olympic Committee member Anita DeFrantz and a video of the city to the strains of “Sweet Home Chicago.”

She was followed by Larry Probst, chairman of the USOC, who promised the city would “fulfill every obligation” to get the Olympics.

12:50 a.m. Obama arrives in Copenhagen

President Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen this morning to help in Chicago’s final push for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Air Force One touched down at 12:50 a.m. Chicago time, 7:50 a.m. Copenhagen time. He will spend less than five hours on the ground.

He was greeted by a phalynx of Danish dignitaries. His motorcade left the airport 19 minutes later.

Later today, the IOC will choose among Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Madrid. That decision is scheduled to be announced shortly before noon Chicago time. There could be as many as three rounds of voting. After each round, assuming no city reaches a majority, the lowest vote-getter will be eliminated.

The city’s presentation to the IOC, led by First Lady Michelle Obama, is scheduled to begin at 1:45 a.m. Chicago is up first. It will have 45 minutes to make its case, with another 15 minutes for questions and answers. The president will answer questions.

Early handicapping has Rio has a slight favorite over Chicago. South America has never hosted an Olympics.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was a late add-on to the traveling team accompanying Obama on Air Force One. Also aboard were two Cabinet members from Illinois, Secretary of Transporation Ray LaHood and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Durbin said White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was reluctant for the president to make the trip. Emanuel had told Durbin that Obama’s busy schedule, coupled with the fact that health care legislation is unresolved, made him skeptical about the Copenhagen venture.

The president joins his wife, Mayor Richard Daley, Oprah Winfrey and the remainder of Chicago’s bid team in Copenhagen to make Chicago’s case.

For earlier coverage on the Copenhagen countdown CLICK HERE.

Psychics weigh in on Chicago’s chances HERE.

Winfrey said the IOC vote could produce “a decision that could be a landmark in Chicago history.”

The president will speak Friday on behalf of Chicago’s bid and take questions from IOC members during the 15-minute question period after the 45-minute prepared presentation.

“He and the First Lady will both participate in the question and answer session,” Presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett said in a Wednesday interview with the Tribune and four other media outlets — one from Italy, one from Japan, one from Great Britain and another from the United States.

–Peter Nicholas, Jeff Finkelman

[ Updates from the Chicago Tribune ]

Decision day at last

BY LISA DONOVAN Staff Reporter

COPENHAGEN — That finish line is coming up fast.

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.

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Just hours away from the decision…

Courtesy of ChicagoPhotoShop.com

Barack Obama stardust lifts Chicago’s chances but vote will go the wire

Barack Obama will lobby hard for his former city to be awarded the 2016 Olympics but nothing can be taken for granted

Pele, right, meets the Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos as lobbying intensifies ahead of the 2016 Olympic vote

It has been no ordinary week in the Danish capital, with the charged atmosphere ahead of last night’s IOC Congress opening gala more akin to a high level political summit than a gathering to decide the destination of the world’s biggest sporting event.

Amid the stunts, the heavy security, the last-minute press conferences and the frantic wooing of the 104 voting members of the 106 International Olympic Committee officials who will decide their fate, the one name on everyone’s lips was that of the man not due to arrive in Copenhagen until this morning.

After travelling overnight, Barack Obama will today step straight from Air Force One into the cavernous Bella Centre conference hall to deliver Chicago’s pitch and attempt to bring the Olympics back to the US for the first time since the underwhelming and chaotic Atlanta Games of 1996. As he does so, he will reconfirm the rebirth of the Olympics over the past three decades as an economic and cultural force.

Despite the scrutiny, the threat of it all going wrong, the fact that no city bar Barcelona has created a lasting legacy and the impact of a global recession, the battle to stage the Games is more intense than ever.

With the IOC’s evaluation commission failing to declare a clear leader, and up to half of all the IOC members still believed to be undecided going into the final hours according to some, much will depend on the final push.

Obama’s late, perfectly timed decision to attend the vote has robbed Rio’s attempt to make Olympic history by bringing the Games to South America for the first time of crucial momentum. But there may yet be a twist in the tale.

Other bidders yesterday tried, in vain, to deflect attention from the arrival of the US president. Shintaro Ishihara, the president of the Tokyo 2016 bid committee, urged IOC members to judge the bids on their technical merits and not on their presentation skills.

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