Chicago eliminated as 2016 Olympic site

Stunned silence.

That was the response at Daley Plaza downtown Friday when Chicago became the first city voted out among the final four bidding to play host to the 2016 Summer Olympics.

"You could've heard a pin drop," said John Murphy of Schaumburg.

Karen Fairless of Naperville found it a "huge" disappointment.

"It makes no sense," she said. "I keep thinking maybe they didn't read it correctly."

"It was a collective gasp of 'Did we just hear what we thought we heard?'" said Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns, who has worked for the U.S. Olympic Committee and is also senior director of development for U.S. Figure Skating.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley never even made it to the Bella Center where the International Olympic Committee was, in effect, voting out one city at a time. Instead, he turned around and rejoined the Chicago contingent that had made the trip for final lobbying before the vote.

"I was shocked. I was disappointed. I couldn't believe it," Daley said, adding, "Like anything else in life, you move on."

President Barack Obama, who became the first sitting U.S. president to lobby in person before the IOC host-city vote, got the news on Air Force One while returning to Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs reported Obama was "disappointed" at the rejection of his adopted hometown.

A crowd that Chicago Police estimated at 10,000 filled Daley Plaza for the formal "Chicago Live Watch Event" when the 106-member IOC began the final process of choosing a host city for the 2016 Summer Games. They lined up for free orange Chicago 2016 T-shirts, which were gone before 10 a.m., and for Chicago 2016 banners and small paper flags. They cheered every mention of Chicago on the jumbo TV screens airing the proceedings from Copenhagen. But when the first city out was announced, shortly before 10:30, and it proved to be Chicago, the crowd went numb.

"I lived in Los Angeles during the Olympics (in 1984)," Fairless said. "It was magical. I was hoping so much Chicago would get it. I don't understand."

In the end, the IOC selected Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, over Madrid, Spain, after Tokyo was the second city eliminated. By that time, shortly before noon, a smattering of people were still in Daley Plaza and cheered the first South American city to be granted the Olympics. But it's nothing like the response that would have been if Chicago had prevailed.

IOC pundits had posited that, if Spanish-speaking members sided with Rio and Madrid, and geographical ties drew votes to Tokyo, Chicago could be in danger of a first-round knockout, as the lowest vote-getter was eliminated on each ballot until some city gained a majority. Yet Chicago 2016's emphasis on accommodating athletes and relatively reasonable $4.8 billion price tag, along with the promise of lucrative U.S. TV rights and, of course, the last-ditch Obama oomph, was thought to make the city safe until the finals with Rio. That thinking, however, turned out to be overconfident.

"I'm shocked and disappointed that this would happen to the United States," said Australian IOC member Kevan Gosper. "I can only think it must have been an accident or mishap in preliminary thinking by an Asian constituency."

The U.S. Olympic Committee caught some of the blame for its sometimes contentious relationship with the IOC and for recently changing presidents, but Bob Ctvrtlik, the USOC's vice chair of international relations, disputed that criticism. "I don't think it's anti-American," he said. "I think we still don't have the horsepower to do the politicking. International engagement takes a lot of time."

"It just wasn't our day to win," said Chicago 2016 Chairman Patrick Ryan. "That's just the way it goes. Some days you win, some days you don't.

"We had a good plan. We had a good team," he added. "That's just the way it goes."

Back at Daley Plaza, however, it was harder to be so philosophical.

"I am absolutely shocked," said Tiela Halpin, a Columbia College student from South suburban Lansing, who apparently had her hair dyed to resemble the Olympic flame. "Very rarely am I speechless. I don't know if I ever expected us to get it for sure, but I never expected us to be the first out. Absolutely not. I expected it to be a cage match to the death between us and Rio."

"I'm disappointed," said Toni Preckwinkle, the Chicago alderman and Cook County Board Democratic presidential candidate whose Hyde Park neighborhood would have been close to Ground Zero for the center of the games as planned by the Chicago 2016 committee. "I think it was a great opportunity for Chicago. To go out in the first round, I never would have expected that."

"I know that the delegation when they went off to Copenhagen was really confident," she added. "They thought their main opposition was going to be Rio."

Yet in spite of their star power, including Chicago TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, and the reported $77 million raised over three years spent in planning and bidding for the games, the city never made it out of the first round of final voting.

It does spare the city, state and federal governments the headache of funding the games, estimated at a minimum of $4.8 billion, but it proved a disappointment to many all the same.

Critics, however, cheered it, although the No Games Chicago anti-Olympics group issued a diplomatic statement saying: "We are relieved, but we also feel sympathy for everyone who passionately wanted the games to come to Chicago. ... In no way are we taking any sort of pleasure in this disappointment. In reality, those Chicagoans who are for the games and those who are against them are committed to the same goal: working hard for what they thought would be best for the city of Chicago in the coming decades."

So should Chicago dust those plans off and try again in four years for the 2020 games? Daley seemed reluctant.

"My hunch is it's unlikely," Burns said. "Today's too early to talk about what's going to happen in five or even 10 years. Today we should reflect on how well we did and how a community came together to pursue a goal we unfortunately fell short of."

Yet others felt differently.

"Yeah, you hope so," Fairless said. "It's such a perfect city for the Olympics. I don't know what they're thinking. It's a shame."

"Absolutely. Why not?" Murphy said. "I'm proud of Mayor Daley and Pat Ryan and all the hard work they put into it.

"Nothing to be ashamed of. It's just a surprise."

AP reports were used in this story.

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