2016, Chicago and President-elect Obama
By Alan Abrahamson
UniversalSports.com
Look, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. was saying Wednesday, if Barack Obama appears next October at the International Olympic Committee session at which the 2016 Summer Games site will be chosen, and the American authorities offer me the chance to take a photo or have a cup of coffee with the man elected Tuesday as the 44th president of the United States, would I accept?
To steal a line from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the vanquished Republican vice-presidential nominee: you betcha.
But, said Samaranch Jr., an IOC member from Spain and longtime proponent of Madrid’s bid for the Olympics, that’s not the relevant question. It’s this: does the election of the Illinois senator mean Chicago is now a slam-dunk 2016 winner?
Hardly, he said.
And he’s right. It’s simply too soon, and there are simply far too many unforeseeable twists and turns yet to take place between now and the IOC vote next Oct. 2, to declare that Obama’s election seals the deal for Chicago. Also in the 2016 mix: Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro.
Even the head of the Chicago 2016 bid, Pat Ryan, was at best cautiously optimistic.
“We’re not looking at this as a sea change in the competitive landscape,” Ryan said. “We really believe it does give us better exposure, which is important; it gives us a strong leader who is respected within the world and the IOC, and that’s positive. But I don’t want to look at, or our team to look at, or our supporters to look at this as the job is done and we’re going to win because of President-elect Obama.
“I just don’t believe that.”
It may be, for instance, that the worldwide economic crunch emerges as a more decisive factor come next October at the IOC vote in Copenhage, Denmark, than even an Obama appearance. Madrid sent out a news release last month declaring that its 2016 bid would “not be squeezed” by the “global credit crunch” and asserting that “all the city’s infrastructure is ready.”
Come next October, moreover, it remains to be seen just how much of the goodwill attending Obama’s election still resonates. In 2001, just days after the 9/11 terror attacks on Washington and New York, for instance, the mayor of Rome suggested that New York ought to get the 2012 Games. The 2012 vote didn’t take place until 2005; New York finished fourth.
Even before the 2008 U.S. presidential election results began tumbling in Tuesday night, Chicago stood as reasonable a chance as any American city ever could of winning in the Olympic arena, a far-better chance than New York did in that 2005 election — in large measure because of a compact venue plan along the incomparable Chicago lakefront and because of the genuine working partnership the city and U.S. Olympic Committee officials have forged.
It’s understatement in the extreme, however, to observe that Obama’s election now offers a potentially enormous upside to the Chicago bid. The American president is the most powerful individual in the world; Obama is from Chicago; and, amid everything else, Obama has lent his support all along to the bid.
Canadian Dick Pound, for 30 years an IOC member, calling Obama’s election “a transformational occurrence in the history of the United States,” said Wednesday it could give the Chicago bid “an entirely new life and energy.”
He added, “With the president-elect coming from Chicago, where all the [other bids] have the same old mayor, the same old, same old — it’s a campaigner’s dream come true.”
So were the images that went out around the world Tuesday night from Grant Park, in downtown Chicago, showcasing Chicago at its best — and, for that matter, showing the best of America as well. Here was possibility made reality, the election of the nation’s first African-American president underscoring what every single American kid learns in school, that it’s in each of us to reach for our grandest hopes and dreams.
The Olympic movement, when everything else is stripped away, is in the hope and dream business.
You can further be sure that, as the weeks and months go along, Chicago’s bid team will point out that Grant Park is within walking distance of 19 would-be Olympic venues and of 20,000 hotel rooms.
Further, the scene of Obama last summer in Berlin, standing before a crowd of 200,000 people, will doubtlessly be on the minds of many important IOC voters. If, as has been suggested, the world yearns more than ever for American leadership but increasingly demands such leadership come packaged in a spirit of humility and cooperation — that’s precisely what Obama represented in Berlin. It’s what the president-elect referred to Tuesday night in Grant Park in declaring that a “new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”
If the presidential election had gone the other way, if Arizona Sen. John McCain had triumphed, Chicago’s chances within the IOC would likely have been dimmed. McCain is still well-remembered within influential Olympic circles for his role in trying to pressure the IOC — and in particular, the then-IOC president, Samaranch Jr.’s father, Juan Antonio Samaranch — to effect reforms in the wake of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, which erupted in late 1998. Many within the IOC did not appreciate that pressure.
No American president has ever appeared at an IOC assembly to lobby for a U.S. bid city, and it remains uncertain if Obama will do so for the 2016 vote in Copenhagen.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared in Singapore, site of the 2012 Summer Games election in 2005, to lobby for London. London won. Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared in Guatemala City, site of the 2014 Winter Games election in 2007, to lobby for Sochi. Sochi won.
“If the [American] president turns up in Copenhagen, statistically there has to be a massive impact in favor of the city he’s supporting, which — great news for Chicago — is his hometown,” observed Pat Hickey, an IOC member from Ireland and the influential president of the European Olympic Committees, which in two weeks will stage its own assembly, a key meeting on the Olympic calendar.
“Mr. Obama is popular and good at speeches, so things could get tough for Japan,” Tomiaki Fukuda, chief of the Japanese delegation to the 2008 Games in Beijing, said Wednesday, according to press accounts.
In June, after the IOC picked Chicago as one of its four final 2016 candidates, Obama, appearing at a rally in Chicago with Mayor Richard M. Daley, said, “Bringing the Olympic Games to Chicago will be a capstone of the success we’ve had in the past couple decades in transforming Chicago into not just a great American city but into a great global city.
Referring to the prospect of Obama appearing in Copenhagen, Ryan said Wednesday, “He has been so supportive that — I would believe, my personal belief is that if things are normal and there’s not a reason he absolutely has to be somewhere else, he’ll be there to support the bid. That’s my personal belief. Nobody can speak for their head of state, though. And that can change the day before.”
That said, it is doubtlessly true that an IOC election has proven about more than any one individual.
French President Jacques Chirac, for instance, showed up in Singapore as well to lobby for Paris.
Paris did not win.