Boxing event is city's Olympic trial
When about 650 amateur boxers gather in Chicago for the world championships that begin today, they won't be the only ones with Olympic hopes on the line.
The tournament is Chicago's shot to prove the American bid city for the 2016 Summer Games can host an Olympic-style event. And with plenty of important people watching, there will be little room for error.
The head of the International Olympic Committee is expected to attend, as are about a dozen other members of the IOC, which will decide in 2009 whether Chicago or another city gets to host the games. And with boxing delegations from about 120 nations, including Russia, France, China and the former Soviet Republics, word of Chicago's performance is sure to spread quickly.
"If you're bidding to host … something as complicated as the Olympics, it certainly helps to show that you can organize something as simple as a world championship in one of the minor sports," said IOC member Dick Pound of Canada.
For Chicago, that means a procession of athletes in the heart of the city, an athletes' village at a posh downtown hotel and a shuttle-bus system to ferry boxers from their hotel to the competition venue -- the same one that would be used if an Olympic Games were held here.
U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth already has put Chicago on notice that it lags behind other international cities bidding for the games and needs to sell itself more to IOC members. One of Chicago's chief rivals, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, showed off for IOC members this summer by successfully hosting the Pan American Games.
The boxing championships also are a chance to shine a positive light on Chicago and the U.S. Olympic movement after a couple of recent rough patches. USOC officials apologized to athletes around the world in the wake of runner Marion Jones' recent doping admissions. And the city was stung by bad publicity after unseasonably hot weather forced the early cancellation of the Chicago Marathon because hundreds of runners got sick or collapsed.
After all the attention on the Jones scandal, in particular, the Chicago boxing tournament is a chance for the United States to show off that side of amateur sports where people play fair, said Bill Scherr, chairman of World Sport Chicago, one of the local host groups for the championships.
"We are a great sporting country and our athletes, for the most part, are clean and playing by the rules," said Scherr, a former Olympic wrestler.
The boxing championship is a qualifier for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the IOC is focused on it because officials have pushed for reforms in the sport, including in its scoring and judging. An IOC member was elected head of the boxing association last year.
"This world championship really signals the rebirth of Olympic-style boxing," USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said.
The United States got the boxing championships only because boxing officials said the federation in Russia, the original host, had failed to fulfill some commitments. Chicago was selected in May as the host city after it beat out Los Angeles to be the American bidder for the 2016 Games.
Boxers took part in Monday's procession and opening ceremonies at the Chicago Theatre. The bouts start today and end with the finals and awards ceremony on Nov. 3.
The venue, the University of Illinois-Chicago Pavilion, has room for 4,000 to 5,000 spectators and some bouts are expected to sell out, Scherr said. Tickets are $10 for preliminary rounds and $25 for the finals.
While the boxing championships pale in size to an Olympics -- about 10,000 athletes at a Summer Games compared to about 650 here -- they're a good practice run because they share many of the same requirements, from athlete housing and transportation to a top-notch venue.