Gibbs slams Steele on Olympics

By CAROL E. LEE

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs questioned Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s support …

…for his country’s Olympic bid Tuesday.

Confronted with Steele’s criticism of the president’s newly announced trip to Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago’s proposal to host the 2016 games, Gibbs replied sharply: “Who’s he rooting for?”

Prompting laughs and “oohs” from the press corps, Gibbs kept swinging, suggesting Steele might be rooting for one of Chicago’s competitors.

“Is he hoping to hop a plane to Brazil and catch the Olympics in Rio?” he quipped. “Maybe it’s Madrid.”

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Obama “Proud of Chicago”

Press Secretary Gibbs says President wants to make strong case for city

By NICOLA ORICHUIA

President Obama’s presence next to his wife Michelle in Copenhagen is an act of love for his city, which is in a close battle with Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro to win over the 2016 Olympics.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the president is enormously proud of Chicago,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told White House reporters during a briefing on Monday morning.

But what if another city were running for the 2016 Olympics instead of Chicago?

“If it had been Los Angeles, I think the notion that the president would have done less because it was a different U.S. city just doesn’t hold a lot of water,” Gibbs said.

The president will leave for the Danish capital on Thursday, hoping “to make a strong case for Chicago and America’s bid for the Olympics in 2016,” Gibbs said.

“Obviously, the Olympics showcases the country that those Olympics are in and there’s a tangible economic benefit to those games being here.”

Still, the final speech for Chicago’s bid will be made by First Lady Michelle Obama.

“Michelle and Michelle alone is a powerful presence and will be a powerful voice for the Olympics coming to America,” Gibbs said.

When asked if Chicago could be trusted to spend Olympic money, the Press secretary responded that “the onus is on the city.”

So what about the super-busy health-care reform schedule Obama had mentioned a few weeks ago?

“I think the president believes health care is in better shape,” Gibbs said.

“I think he felt strongly and personally that he should go and make the case for the United States.”

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Chicago’s Olympic Bid: Both a Blessing and a Burden

By Katie Connolly

The White House announced today that President Obama was dispatching the nation’s most powerful messenger to make the final pitch for Chicago’s 2016 Olympics bid: himself. He’ll be joining a star-studded bid team; the White House had previously advised that the first lady and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, another Chicago native, would be heading up the charge. The first couple will each make a presentation about why Chicago is best placed to host the celebrated games and to “celebrate the ideals of the Olympic movement,” according to the White House press release.

But why would Chicago even want to host this mammoth and at times disruptive event? Hosting the Olympics is a mixed blessing. It can be a prestigious honor, allowing a city to show off its charms to a captivated world audience, as well as to the influx of international visitors. The opening and closing ceremonies are an opportunity to exhibit a nation’s cultural and technical prowess, while hometown teams nearly always perform better in the games themselves. On the downside there’s the enormous expense and the inconvenience of constructing new facilities. While Chicago residents will ultimately benefit from upgrades to their transit system, hotels, and recreational infrastructure, they’ll no doubt be hampered by the years of public-works projects and interruptions to traffic and trains. And of course they’ll be paying for it. Host cities nearly always end up forking out well over their budgeted amount. Estimates for the cost of the London Olympics have almost tripled since that city won the right to host the 2012 games.

Weighing all of this is difficult. Many of the cultural benefits are unquantifiable, and it’s difficult to tell which public-works projects would have happened regardless. The Olympics will provide a great excuse for improving Chicago’s aging rail system, which will be enormously beneficial in the longer term. But would that have happened anyway? Who knows. Perhaps the best measure for the impact of the Olympics on a city is to look at precedent. Take Sydney, for example. (I have to admit to some bias here. Being an Aussie and an unabashed fan of the Olympic games in general, I was inordinately happy with the Sydney Olympics and, having seen Sydney before and after, believe it prompted significant improvements to the city.)

According to the New South Wales treasurer (Sydney is the capital city of the state of New South Wales), staging the Olympics cost $6.5 billion (all figures are in 2001 Australian dollars), a cost that was shared among the state government, the private sector, the federal government, and the Olympic organizing committee. Ticket sales and sponsorship helped to contribute revenue. Accounting firm Arthur Anderson estimated that over the period from 1994-95 to 2005-06, the Olympics generated about $6.5 billion in additional economic activity, the large majority of which occurred within New South Wales. A 2001 study presented to the International Chair in Olympism estimated that this represented a 0.12% uptick for the Australian economy over 12 years. The study’s author, Jill Haynes, found that the Olympics prompted an addition $1.4 billion in income for Australia in the financial quarter in which the Olympics were held. Just under $1 billion of that amount came from broadcast fees. That quarter Australia saw its first trade surplus in three years.

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Video Report from White House Event

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Will He or Won’t He? Obama the Key to Chicago’s Olympic Dream

President Obama addresses Congress during joint session regarding health care reform - September 9, 2009

There really shouldn’t be much suspense here – the man said it plain-as-day during Wednesday’s White House rah-rah for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid.

“I would make the case in Copenhagen personally, if I weren’t so firmly committed to making — making real the promise of quality, affordable health care for every American,” President Obama said. “But the good news is I’m sending a more compelling superstar to represent the city and country we love, and that is our First Lady, Michelle Obama.

“I promise you, we are fired up about this,” he said, making it obvious that he needed to make that particular point crystal clear to his audience.

The guy has several no-win situations:

A) He’s a deadbeat for ignoring health care reform and the war in Afghanistan to go schmooze the International Olympic Committee on vote day, October 2, in Copenhagen if Chicago gets the Games.

B) If instead the bid goes to another city, Obama looks like a total loser if he went through all the trouble of going there to kiss the Olympic committee’s ring for naught.

C) He looks bad if he doesn’t go “represent” his fellow Chicagoans and his absence is blamed for a loss.

The only way he looks good is if Chicago gets it without him there, which is not likely according to at least one guy who oughta know, but I’ll come back to that.

I spent almost three full days this week immersed in the minutiae of the 2016 proposal during DePaul University’s 2016 Olympics Specialized Reporting Institute and picked up a bunch of interesting tidbits I’ll just list for your reading enjoyment:

• Charlie Besser, a sport television media specialist, estimates that a U.S. 2016 Olympic games would bring in $400- $500 million more U.S. dollars in sponsorship revenue than a Rio, Madrid or Tokyo games. He said that if you aggregated media rights revenues from all of Europe, it would come out to be about a third of the estimated $2-billion-plus the U.S. summer-winter package would bring in – and he made it clear the IOC knows this.

• Misty Johanson, a Hospitality Leadership professor who was heavily involved in Atlanta’s 1996 summer games, said their Games revitalized downtown Atlanta and had an estimated $5 billion economic impact from over 2 million visitors during the Olympic and Paralympic games. Give the lady her honesty points: she was clear that people were displaced in the process and that all these years later, there are lingering issues over the loss of a key housing project.

• I’ll credit this quote to Rita Athas, the executive director of World Business Chicago, though nearly every expert who addressed the press corps during the conference said exactly the same thing: “No Summer Games in the United States has ever lost money.” Sure, breaking even is a far cry from the $22.5 billion she said the bid expects to bring to Chicago, but still.

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For Games, Obamas Enter the PR Vault

Chicago Backed as 2016 Olympics Site

By Dan Zak – Washington Post Staff Writer

“Just throw him down!” yells Michelle Obama.

“Throw him down,” her husband echoes sternly.

Thirteen-year-old Lakeisha Thornton plants her foot, grips the uniform of judo champion Ryan Reser, and twists her body. Reser obliges by hurling his solid frame to the blue wrestling mat, creating a satisfying thud. The first couple cheers. Camera shutters go snip snip snip. “Stars and Stripes Forever” crashes over the speakers on the South Lawn.

“He looked so big and much stronger,” Thornton says afterward, “but I thought, ‘I really want to flip him.’ So I did.”

Backers for Chicago’s Olympic bid are hoping for a similar come-from-behind, mind-over-matter, rah-rah-America result when the host city for the 2016 Summer Games is selected 15 days from now. The president, of course, wants his adopted home town to beat out Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo. He’ll do anything — film four campaign-style videos, whip up an entire White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport, wield a plastic light saber against a silver-medal fencer to the strains of John Philip Sousa after the judo moment Wednesday. Everything except fly to Copenhagen to lobby the committee before its final vote Oct. 2.

Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin each made last-minute visits to the Olympic Congress. After these sales calls, London got the 2012 Summer Games and Sochi, Russia, claimed the Winter Olympiad in 2014.

“Mr. President, you need to be there,” the Chicago Tribune said in an editorial Tuesday.

“If he can be persuaded to go, I think it makes a huge difference,” International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound, a Canadian, told the Associated Press that same day. Dilemma No. 1,589 for the president: lose face by going and not delivering, or get blamed for losing the opportunity by staying home.

Obama sent his regrets to Denmark. He has a prior engagement. With health-care reform.  Blaaah.

The next best thing: He’s sending South Side native Michelle, “a more compelling superstar,” as he puts it, to charm the committee. And then there’s Wednesday’s photo op on the South Lawn with Olympians, Paralympians, members of the Chicago 2016 bid team, and Mayor Richard Daley — who appears, amusingly, to be a whole head shorter than both Obamas — plus various Washington area schoolchildren, some of whom are wheelchair-bound or blind or fitted with prosthetics. Daley and others wear lapel pins that cross the American and Danish flags.

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Obama’s speech from the White House supporting Chicago 2016

Click on the following link to view speeches from the Chicago 2016 event at the White House today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucO10rVEzm8

(Video from ESPN – sorry for the commercial, and the inability to embed the video)

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Below are some pictures from the Chicago Tribune -

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Obama backs Chicago Olympic bid: ‘we want these Games’

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama on Wednesday delivered a strong, personal and highly visible endorsement to the 2016 Olympic bid of his hometown of Chicago, declaring: “we want these Games.”

“Chicago is ready, the American people are ready, we want these Games,” Obama said, in an event at the White House dedicated to the Olympics, Paralympics and youth sport.

“I am fired up about this,” Obama, a former senator of Illinois and resident of Chicago, said on the south lawn of the White House. “Let the Games begin, right here in the United States of America.”

Chicago were originally seen as the frontrunners but have in many people’s eyes lost ground to Rio de Janeiro – bidding to become the first South American city to host the Games – while Tokyo and Madrid are believed to be lagging behind them.

The vote by the 100-plus International Olympic Committee (IOC) members takes place in Copenhagen on October 2nd.

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Chicago 2016 Celebrates 16 Day Countdown to Host City Decision in Copenhagen

CHICAGO (September 16, 2009)—Today, Chicago 2016 announced that the final 16 days leading up to the International Olympic Committee’s vote for the 2016 Host City will be celebrated across the city and nation. The Olympic spirit will be strong throughout the U.S. in anticipation of the final presentations and the decision on October 2, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Today marks the start of the 16 day countdown leading up to the October 2 decision day, and in Chicago, the support and enthusiasm will be visible from all corners of the city. On different days, unexpected surprises will unfold on the streets of Chicago. Opportunities for residents to register their support through “I Back Chicago 2016” push button counters will pop up in multiple locations. In addition, volunteers will be distributing orange commemorative Copenhagen wristbands in the days leading up to the decision, encouraging people to watch the live broadcast on Friday, October 2, beginning at 9:00 AM CT in Daley Plaza.

“Chicago is beaming with positive energy and the Olympic spirit and we can’t wait to share it with the world on October 2,” said Patrick G. Ryan, chairman and CEO of Chicago 2016. “We have a lot of exciting plans in store for the next 16 days—don’t be surprised if you see Olympic and Paralympic athletes, as well as Olympic hopefuls, popping up in unexpected places around town.”

Additionally, in the days leading up to the decision, downtown buildings on the picturesque skyline will shine brightly with lights displaying Chicago 2016 and a countdown to October 2.

Since Chicago’s bid is America’s bid, the nation’s capital will also kick off the 16 day countdown. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will host Olympic and Paralympic athletes at the White House today, including Henry Cejudo, Michael Conley, Bob Ctvrtlik, Dominique Dawes, Anita DeFrantz, Jerrod Fields, Gary Hall, Jr., April Holmes, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Hope Lewellen, Arlene Limas, Jair Lynch, Linda Mastandrea, Tim Morehouse, Bob Pickens, Myles Porter and Ryan Reiser.

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Obama, Michelle, Mayor Daley, Olympians at White House Wednesday to push Chicago 2016 Olympic bid

By Lynn Sweet

Below, from the White House…..

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of Media Affairs
For Immediate Release
September 15, 2009

UPDATE: President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama Host White House Event on Olympics, Paralympics and Youth Sport
List of Olympians and Paralympians participating in tomorrow’s event is below

WASHINGTON – On Wednesday, September 16, 2009, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will host an event on the South Lawn of the White House with the White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport, Chicago2016 and United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to promote Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games and highlight the Obama administration’s commitment to service, healthy living and youth sport.

The President and First Lady will be joined by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, representatives from Chicago2016, the USOC, United States Olympians and Paralympians, along with schoolchildren from local DC area schools to discuss the ideals of the Olympic movement and the Obama administration’s commitment to service and expanding access to healthy, constructive activities like sports for our nation’s children.

The group of Olympians and Paralympians participating in tomorrow’s event are below:

Olympians
Jackie Joyner Kersee- Track and Field
Dominique Dawes- Gymnastics
Arlene Limas- Taekwondo
Henry Cejudo- Wrestling
Ryan Reiser- Judo
Michael Conley- Track and Field
Bob Pickens- Wrestling
Bob Ctvrtlik- Volleyball
Anita Defranz (US IOC member) – Rowing
Tim Morehouse- Fencing
Jair Lynch – Men’s Gymnastics

Paralympians involved with Chicago 2016
Linda Mastendrea- Track Field
Hope Lewellen- Sitting Volleyball and Wheelchair tennis
April Holmes- Track and Field
Jerrod Fields- Track and Field
Myles Porter- Judo

Two small groups of Olympic and Paralympic athletes will visit DC area schools in the morning and travel back to the White House to join the President and First Lady, who will make remarks in the afternoon. These school visits are part of Athlete Ambassador, a service program set up by Chicago 2016 and World Sport Chicago where Olympians’ and Paralympians from across the country promote the values of the Olympic Movement by engaging youth in sport activities.

After the President and First Lady’s remarks at the White House, Chicago2016 representatives and the Olympic and Paralympic athletes will conduct sports demonstrations at the White House.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that the First Lady will lead the delegation to support Chicago’s bid at the host city election in Copenhagen on October 2, 2009. She will travel with Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Obama and Chair of the White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport. In her role as First Lady, Mrs. Obama, who was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, has been committed to bridging the gap between the White House and underserved communities around DC and across the country, and her trip to Copenhagen is an opportunity for the First Lady to carry this commitment to the international stage.

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