Olympic Fever

Over on WCSN Rick Perelman offers up some advice for the Chicago 2016 Bid Committee.  Perelman’s worked with five Olympic organizing committees, so it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  Will Chicago heed his advice?

Yesterday the City of Chicago held a rally to celebrate moving on to the final phase of bidding for the 2016 Games. A lot of dignitaries spoke–people involved on the bid team, Mayor Daley, Rep. Rahm Emmanuel, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and a big surprise: Barack Obama.

Mayor Daley gave an immensely passionate speech–he really wants these Games–about when you travel around the world, you come home and say, “God bless America.” He really emphasized our country’s diversity and Chicago’s diversity (didn’t hurt that the rally happened to coincide with the city’s Sister Cities festival), and he talked about how Chicago would be a great place to have these Games that thrive on diversity.

Then Obama took the stage. I’ve never seen him in person, but it was like being at a rock concert: People went nuts. His home happens to be a couple of blocks from Washington Park, the proposed site of the Olympic stadium. He’s all for the Games.

The new logo went on display–it can now display the Olympic rings and the words “Candidate City.”

You can see some pics here .

Now that the 2016 final cities are in place, there’s a lot of news about who’s got the best bid and what that all really means. In Chicago, it means try to figure out how to best Madrid and Tokyo. Chicago didn’t do that well in the first round, but that’s OK–all they were trying to is make the cut, which they did.

The hard part’s just beginning though. Chicago has some tangible problems with their bid –transportation issues, IOC questioning whether or not they’ve budgeted enough for construction costs–but they’ve also got a deficit in the intangibles, namely people who are known to the IOC. We don’t have a Sebastian Coe in charge. We don’t have a Vladimir Putin pushing our city . We may have Da Mayor , but apparently that doesn’t go too far in international competition.

We will, however, have a new president by the time the final city is chosen, and that may help or hurt Chicago’s chances. Will it be Obama, who’s bid friendly, or McCain, who’s ticked off the IOC before ? The choice is up to you.