by Larry Eder
Rio 2016 in victory, photo courtesy of Olympics.org.
In trying to digest the amazing twenty-four hours that made up Octber 2, 2009, and the naming of Rio de Janeiro as the host of the next Summer Olympics, I wanted to try and look at it from the official angle, that of the IOC. So, I visited Olympics.org, the IOC’s official website.
The site is well developed and features, for anyone who would care to view, the video of each presentation, from Chicago, to Madrid, to Tokyo to Rio. All four presentations are there, in their splendor: http://www.olympic.org/en/content/Olympic-Games/Candidate-Cities/Elections-for-the-2016-Games/. What the careful observer will also find, is a very well- done press release on the IOC and their delight with taking the Olympic movement to another continent. I encourage you to spend some time on the Olympic site, as it is developed for the sports fan.
My belief, after a good nights sleep, is still that the rising wind of taking the Olympic movement to another continent was too much for any other bid to overcome. The unfortunate thing about Chicago 2016 was that, yes, it would have been a wonderful Olympics, in the midwestern U.S., a site most in the world have seen on TV, but never experienced for themselves. Remember, our last Olympics in the Midwest was St. Louis in 1904-but it was a bit smaller then!
I hope that Chicago does try again, perhaps for 2024. I believe the feelings about the U.S., and the ill feelings on past U.S. Olympics are still a bit too much to be overcome at this time. But, we shall see. A World Championships in athletics makes the most sense for the U.S., but if one thinks that there are politics in the IOC, then, dear reader, the U.S. has, time and time again, been overwhelmed at trying to understand and to communicate with the IAAF. Still, a world champs in the U.S. makes tremendous sense for many reasons. We will discuss that later this week.
Image of Rio, from presentation, courtesy of www. Olympics.org.
For more on the Olympic movement, please check on http://www.Olympics.org
For twenty-four different views of the sport of running, please click on
http://www.runningnetwork.com
