In the excitement over reaching the 2016 Olympics “final four,” you can’t really fault a Chicagoan for jumping a little too high a little too fast.
The 11 a.m. newscast on our local ABC-TV affiliate began with Wednesday’s breaking news from Greece … plus “a surprise.”
“Chicago is not only in the running,” reporter Ben Bradley said, “Chicago is ranked No. 1.”
Well, no.
It was an honest error — Chicago was the candidate city revealed first, but the order was random — and the good folks at Channel 7 acted quickly to correct it.
As did our NBC friends at Channel 5, who noted in their Web site’s first posting “the Windy City is at the top of the list of host cities” after the International Olympic Committee’s announcement.
Afraid not.
The 2016 candidates have been narrowed to Chicago, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, not necessarily in that order.
In fact, in 11 categories an IOC panel evaluated — transportation, venues, public opinion, etc. — our fair city ranked No. 1 in none.
Didn’t we even come in first in congeniality?
Well, at least we showed that Doha, Qatar, and Baku, Azerbaijan, a thing or two about how to put on an Olympic bid.
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This is nevertheless a juicy plum for Chicago, its second of the week, what with Barack Obama having just squeaked through his own tight candidacy brackets to the Final Two.
By the time Oct. 2, 2009, rolls around and the final IOC vote is taken, maybe Mayor Daley and his merry band of super delegates can win this one for the red, white and blue.
“It’s not just Mayor Daley’s proposal,” Mayor Daley said in the third person in Athens after the 2016 candidate cities were proudly proclaimed. “It’s America’s proposal.”
And we have just the man in mind for the job.
President Obama, should he win and be sworn in on January 20, 2009, thereafter will need to be a major player on his city’s behalf if Chicago is to emerge from a relative obscurity and score an unexpected, come-from-behind triumph in much the same manner that he has.
The city needs to put a face to Chicago’s bid internationally. For a variety of reasons, Obama is the right man at the right time.
After all:
*He would have a personal commitment to a Chicago Olympics in a way that a President John McCain, in all due fairness to an Arizonan, could not be expected to have. This is his town. These are his people.
*He would be in a position to ask a favor of Michael Jordan, a gold-medal Olympian and most world-famous Chicagoan (at least up to now), to help him woo and sway the IOC. If a fellow basketball lover in the White House asked for an assist, you can bet Air Jordan would jump.
*He could cash in on a wild popularity (the kind presidents in office don’t tend to maintain) and a remarkable knack for fundraising to help Chicago’s committee find more private donors. That would add immeasurably to the $9 million already spent on this 2016 bid and the millions more that will be required.
*He might be just the guy to calm a number of skeptical Chicagoans who can’t get beyond the fact the city’s commuter traffic might be more congested for a mere fortnight nine years from now. It would be sweet if citizens didn’t reject a once-in-a-lifetime event because of temporary inconvenience.
*And, he could prove invaluable in reassuring the IOC’s voters that neither political nor ideological differences between nations need contaminate what is, in its essence, nothing more than a sports competition.
Obama seems to understand this part quite well.
After adversary Hillary Clinton strongly urged President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in protest of China’s governmental rule of Tibet and other concerns, Obama preached restraint.
He described himself as “hesitant to make the Olympics a site of political protest because I think it’s partly about bringing the world together.”
Go ahead, boycott Beijing if you must, but don’t then go hat in hand looking for support for an Olympics of your own.
Obama can do for Chicago’s 2016 bid what Tony Blair did for London’s 2012 one — be its point man, its champion.
And if he also, in turn, could persuade Jordan to pick and roll with him, do for his country’s bid what Lord Sebastian Coe did for England’s as its official bid leader, well, what IOC voter would not be charmed and disarmed by that?
London pulled out all the stops for 2012. It had to. Paris was the favorite all along, right up to the day of the vote.
Each finalist went all out. Spain sent its queen. France sent its president. New York shot the works. Hillary Clinton went to the final pitch in person. So did Mayor Michael Bloomberg. So did the Olympian of old Muhammad Ali, even though his principal connection to New York was having fought in Madison Square Garden.
Yet on the first ballot, New York placed last.
London 22, Paris 21, Madrid 20, Big Apple 19 … that’s how close these things can get.
Second ballot: Madrid 32, London 27, Paris 25.
But by the fourth and final tally, London was the victor over Paris, 54-50.
Therefore, if there is a chance for Chicago to win this thing, we need to stand side by side and link hands as if we are about to sing “We Are the World.”
We need everybody. We need local son and daughter Barack and Hillary to get on the same team. We need Oprah and Springer. We need Gene and Georgetti. We need our current governor and the one in jail.
We need Jordan and Pippen. We need Lovie and Urlacher. We need Bart Conner to flip on by and Bonnie Blair to skate on up. We need the White Sox’s Ken Williams and his godfather, 1968 bronze medalist John Carlos. We need to curry international favor, so we need Fukudome and Zambrano and Deng and Nocioni.
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But mainly we need to pass this torch to Obama.
If he can win enough votes, who knows? Maybe he can get Tokyo, Rio and Madrid to concede.
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