Chicago Olympics: IOC commission tours potential sites/Chicago Olympics: Barack Obama seen as the closer to get 2016 Games

Chicago Olympics: IOC commission tours potential sites - Few protesters show up on a cold, rainy Day 2 of evaluators' visit
By Philip Hersh and David Heinzmann
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 6, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-olympic-visit-06-apr06,0,4446283.story


Alina Gonzalez of Chicago holds a Great Britain flag as pro-Olympic demonstrators stage a display for International Olympic Committee members who were touring potential Chicago sites for the 2016 Summer Games Sunday. (Tribune photo by Jose M. Osorio / April 5, 2009)

The three dozen musicians, baton twirlers and dancers from the King College Prep Jaguar Band wore lightweight costumes as they played intermittently in sporadic rain and 30-degree temperatures for nearly an hour Sunday morning when the big moment came.

It lasted about 63 seconds, which is how long it took for the 13 members of the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission to file by the band on their way to a briefing in the DuSable Museum of African-American History about Chicago's Olympic plans for Washington Park.

It was among the few, brief glimpses of the commission members, designed as photo opportunities for news media kept at several arms' lengths from the visitors, who will make no comment until Tuesday afternoon, the last day of their visit. And it will be a surprise if what they say at the lone IOC news conference sheds much more light on their feelings about the Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Games and their experiences during four days that could have a dramatic impact on the city's future.

In the largely opaque and eventual secret-ballot process of choosing an Olympic host city, the candidates stage public displays of affection for the visiting evaluators, like the band performance. But the objects of the affection limit their public reactions to an occasional smile.

While most of the commission members walked resolutely past the musicians toward the museum, Guy Drut of France and Andres Botero of Colombia, who also are IOC members, acknowledged the jazzy reception on a damp, cold and windy day by stopping to take pictures of the band members.

That was a snapshot of Day Two on the official program for the evaluation commission's inspection visit to Chicago.

Hundreds of volunteers, like the band, and just a handful of protesters weathered long waits to greet the commission's members as they spent nearly eight hours touring planned Olympic sports venues, media center and the Olympic Village site in the city. The tour was the most public moment of what Chicago 2016 head Patrick Ryan called the commission's chance to "kick the tires" of the city's bid.

Yet the commission members' impressions and the report they prepare after visiting the other three finalists—Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid—in the next month will be just one factor in the Oct. 2 vote taken by the IOC to choose the 2016 host.

Friendships, geopolitical reasons and the effectiveness of the massive lobbying campaigns each city has engaged in for more than a year will play significant roles in the outcome. Olympic champion athletes, including gymnasts Bart Conner of Morton Grove and Nadia Comaneci, his Romanian wife; soccer player Carli Lloyd; diver Greg Louganis; and swimmer Pablo Morales were on hand at several stops to introduce the sites to commission members.

At the United Center, they got a 40-second video greeting from two-time gold medalist Michael Jordan, who called the arena "one of my favorite places in the world" and said "standing as a representative of the United States at the Olympics is one of the proudest moments of my life."

Mayor Richard Daley rode with commission members on their first stop of the tour Sunday and later rejoined them for lunch at the Shedd Aquarium.

Two political heavyweights join the bid team's presentations Monday. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, both longtime Chicagoans and close allies of President Barack Obama, will tell the commission about support of the bid from the federal government and from the president.

Bid organizers acknowledged that Sunday's tour has been the subject of much anxious planning and rehearsal. There was a small army of volunteer bid staffers and city workers on hand across the city to make sure the long Sunday drive went as smoothly as possible. Extra police officers, most of them in plainclothes and unmarked cars, kept a low profile but swarmed in the background at each stop along the way.

While the No Games organization had promised a "tent city" demonstration in Washington Park on Sunday, just a few demonstrators showed up toward the end of the commission's stop at the DuSable Museum.

Later, at the proposed tennis venue near the Waveland Clock Tower on the lakefront, just four demonstrators stood in the rain and cold waiting for the chance to wave their signs at the commission's tour buses. They said they fear that the Olympics would be a financial debacle for the city.

"We've had all these huge projects—things that Daley has promoted—that have gone grossly over budget," said retired flight attendant Patricia Yeray, noting that projects such as Millennium Park cost significantly more than originally expected. "I believe it will be harmful to the people in the city—not the powerful people and the politicians—but the working people. The kind of people I encounter when I ride the bus."

phersh@tribune.com

dheinzmann@tribune.com






Chicago Olympics: Barack Obama seen as the closer to get 2016 Games - President's ties to Chicago used to bid's advantage, with the hope of clinching visit to Copenhagen
By Philip Hersh
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 7, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-olympic-visit-07-apr07,0,4970573.story


Last June, when the 2016 Olympic bid race moved into the final stage and five months remained in the race for the White House, officials of Chicago's bid had all but abandoned their neutrality on the outcome of the presidential election.

They clearly saw that having a Chicagoan as president would be an invaluable boost to the city's Olympic chances because, as bid Chairman Patrick Ryan said 10 months ago, "that would bring our community more to the forefront internationally."

The bid's emphasis on the Obama impact and influence has grown significantly since his election.

"I don't think any past American bid has had the kind of popular global president or government leader that we have in Barack Obama," said George Hirthler of Atlanta, a consultant to the Chicago bid. "It's like the stars have aligned for us."

The president has done two bid promotion videos, the second debuting for a visiting international Olympic panel before its first meeting with Chicago 2016 officials Saturday morning.

On Monday, Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett told the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission that the federal government plans logistical support unprecedented for a U.S. Olympics.

In addition, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a video presentation assuring "streamlined, expedited" entry procedures for accredited Olympic visitors. That issue has caused friction for foreign athletes and sports officials because of tightened U.S. security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

According to Chicago 2016 President Lori Healey, Jarrett told the evaluation commission that if Chicago is chosen, the White House would establish a special office to provide "top-level support for the Games." Jarrett, a former Chicago 2016 board member, would head the office.

Healey said the federal pledge would be binding on a new administration in the "unforeseen circumstance" Obama is not re-elected.

Bid officials hope Obama can seal a Chicago victory over Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro by coming to Copenhagen, where the IOC chooses the 2016 host Oct. 2—just as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Russian President Vladimir Putin are credited with having done for London 2012 and Sochi 2014. Both leaders met privately with IOC members before their vote.

"The members, myself included, would be very, very impressed to see Mr. Obama in Copenhagen," Madrid supporter and IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain said in a recent interview with the Tribune at his Madrid office. "Any statements he makes—and he is already working in his statements for Chicago—are listened to very, very carefully.

"Having said that, it is different when President Putin or Tony Blair go and say, 'I will put in the money.' This is more than someone coming, even if it is the president of the United States, and saying, 'I love the Games, and I support it wholeheartedly, but no money because the law in my country says no money."

No city in the last quarter-century has won the Games without a blanket guarantee to cover all financial risks. Chicago is making no such guarantee, but the other three finalists have done so.

Although IOC President Jacques Rogge told reporters March 27 that the "form of the guarantee is not an issue," the IOC still must agree to exceptions to the language of its host-city contract if Chicago is selected.

In a letter to Rogge dated Jan. 30 and obtained by the Tribune under the Freedom of Information Act, the city, the bid committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee asked for an acknowledgment or revisions in the host-city contract so that the city's liability is limited to the $500 million it has pledged as a guarantee.

The contract requires the city and the Olympic organizing committee to assume unlimited financial liability for the "planning, organization and staging of the Games."

Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky would not say whether the contract had come up in Monday's discussions.

phersh@tribune.com