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Chicago's Run For the Games

CIty puts best foot forward to win 2016 Games

By Phil Rogers

| Tuesday, Jul 21, 2009 | Updated 3:58 PM CST

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Little things become obvious to evaluation committee members almost immediately.

When many Chicago reporters, myself included, first came in contact with the bid process for the Olympics, it was when Chicago's Olympic team was slugging it out with Los Angeles for the right to host the 2016 Games.

L.A.'s inspection tour came first, and when the USOC came calling with a busload of experts and a raft of questions, it seemed the LA 2016 team had thought of everything.

The venue tour took place on one of those classically sunny Los Angeles days. And lest anyone lose sight of the LA advantage over cold and often-cloudy Chicago, all of us on the tour were handed a tube of sun-block as we boarded the shuttles.

Riding along with the USOC team, we were shown the proposed Olympic Village at UCLA. We zipped down a freeway as if all of that pesky L.A. traffic was nothing but a dusty memory. We visited the Staples Center, where I sat in Jack Nicholson's courtside seat. The Coliseum, site of the city's 1984 Olympic triumph was declared ready for a facelift, and other venues for sports like cycling and soccer were not only ready to go, they were brand new.

To make matters worse, the Walt Disney Studio and the production team behind "Pirates of the Caribbean" put together L.A.'s dazzling Olympic video. And all of us on the trip knew all too well that the architect of L.A.'s 1984 masterpiece, Peter Ueberroth, was then the current head of the United States Olympic Committee, the very organization which would make the choice.

The L.A. team looked like they weren't even breaking a sweat, and the letterhead was all but printed.

Then Chicago left them in the dust.

"It was just the passion of the people," says Bob Ctvrtlik who was a member of the USOC Evaluation Commission which chose Chicago. "When we were evaluating the cities, Chicago was clearly the best city to host the games from the United States."

Standing outside the Fairmont Hotel, which is serving as the IOC headquarters in Chicago, Ctvrtlik, a vice-president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, says little things become obvious to evaluation committee members almost immediately.

"The first thing is, how clean is the airport? How well do the people take care of you? Next they're going to start looking ... what's the venue plan look like? Technically can these people host the games, which I feel pretty confident we'll do a great job on that, and then after that they're going to look, do these people really want the games?"

"They don't want to put this precious commodity that they have in a city that really doesn't want the Olympic Games," he said. "You have to remember this is a risk assessment on their part. They have to go and stand in front of 115 IOC members and say, 'This city can do this, and we are confident that they can do this!"

While Thursday was designated as the IOC's formal travel day, and many commission members were observed arriving on flights at O'Hare, Ctvrtlik says some came in early and began taking a look around.

"They've been coming in for the last few days," he said. "And also people have come in unannounced in the last couple months to do their own observations. So this is a key piece of the puzzle, but it's not the entire puzzle at all."

It is important to note that while the IOC members are getting a taste of a lingering Chicago winter, the actual games would be held in some of Chicago's hottest months, late July and early August of 2016. Plus, committee members view every city as more than the snapshot they observe during a visit. For example, the IOC committee which evaluated London's bid arrived to bitter cold and snow. The proposed stadium site was a toxic brownfield area. And London was the winning bid for 2012.

"There has to be a little bit of imagination on the part of the commission members, but it won't matter whether it's sunny, whether it's snowing," said Ctvrtlik. "These are experienced professionals. They know what they're looking at. They can imagine what a stadium will look like from the renderings."

Over the next several days, the IOC team will listen to 17 technical presentations. They will take an 8-hour tour of the city's proposed venues. But Ctvrtlik says what they do during their down time will be equally important.

"What they do when they're not with us, shapes their opinion."

"Their impressions, not in the choreographed tours, but when they're in a taxicab, when they go for a drink by themselves, they'll get the real feel for the city and I think they'll like it," he said.

I remember one other thing about that USOC evaluation of Los Angeles. About a week before, I called our Los Angeles station and asked to speak to the reporter they had assigned to their Olympic bid.

"Oh that," said the person who answered the phone. "We're not really into that."

They didn't even send a reporter to the announcement of the winner in Washington. And that attitude seemed to permeate the entire L.A. bid process. Their team ran like a watch. But there was no detectable passion, or enthusiasm, from the city.

And Chicago won. Hands down.

I still have an "LA 2016" bag under my desk. It's covered with dust. And the IOC is here right now, making a decision which could bring the Olympics to Chicago in 2016.

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