18 thoughts on “Rio Gets the Olympics!”

  2. I’m in DuPage county. My taxes weren’t going to go up to pay for this if they lost money. (Most host cities have lost money.)

    I was mostly neutral and didn’t follow it much.

    It might have been fun to take the train into the city and watch a few events. Otherwise, I’d have stayed the heck out of the city during the event.

    I’m sure the hospitality industry is disappointed, as are contractors with ties to Mayor Daley!

  4. Montreal only finished paying for teh 1976 Olympics areound eh year 2000. The Olympic Stadium – commonly called the Big Owe for obvious reasons – is regarded as a white elephant. It has been closed and will be torn down. Chicago can be thankful that it has been delvered from this Olympic folly.

  5. Didn’t Oprah travel there also? Did she say anything? All I hear about is the pitch from the other 2 O’s. I heard part of Michelle’s speech on the radio, and I think they would have had a better chance without the speeches. All this rambling about watching the olympics as a child, blah, blah, blah, as if anyone on the IOC cared.

  6. I lived in Southern California for 35 years, including the 80s. The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles caused me to have the most memorable vacation in the Pacific Northwest (US) and the Canadian SW.

    I never saw and event, live or on TV and didn’t miss it. Many of my friends said that the traffic had never been so light as during the Olympics. It seems many others did as I did.

    Congratulations Rio.

  7. It is difficult to conceive that a President would squander so much prestige and political capital on something so trivial.
    It is almost as if he and his advisors would rather pursue ways to get great buckets of pork money to their pals in Chicago than to worry about real problems. This failed stunt of BHO’s raises real questions about his priorities, and proves up concerns about his capabilities. It is clear from this that the decision making group he has placed around himself is at least as capable of making bad decisions as any other President in recent memory.
    This raises hopes that his radical AGW based agenda might still be derailed.

  8. Prague city fathers also talked about going for Olympics. They spent as an hors d’oeuvre some millions about preliminary feasibility studies, but the Prague citizens were less than pleased and most of them regardless of their political leanings clearly saw that as yet another “money tunnel” for the contractor friends.

  9. The Sydney 2000 Olympics broke even, more or less. As such, it was a fabulous two-week long free party, but nothing more. Enjoyable while it lasted, but mostly forgotten almost as soon as it was over. Some of the facilities have proven useful since, others gather dust. There was no real economic dividend: since 2000, Sydney has seen less economic, or even tourism, growth than other Australian citites.

  10. hunter,
    I think you’re being a bit tough on Obama on this one. Yeah… maybe he could have made better use of the 4 hours he probably devoted to the speech. Maybe he should have thought about the climate impact of burning all the fuel to for making an otherwise unnecessary trip using Air Force 1. But probably got good will from a number of politically connected people for this, and he thinks that will help him push his agenda. That’s what effective politicians try to do.

    (FWIW: I’m against large portions of his agenda, and he seems to be having trouble pushing it. But I can’t really fault him for trying. The people who elected him expect him to try.)

    Braddles–
    Chicago is a beautiful city and deserves more tourism. The problem for Chicago is it’s “in the middle” and also not near natural wonders like the Grand Canyon. The sort of “classic” path for Europeans is NY (big city), Natural wonders (Grand Canyon etc.), LA (big city) go home.

    If you’ve only got two weeks, why add another big city in between?

  11. We got the Olympics in Greece in 2004. It was good for the tourism, which is the main industry of the country. All that free advertisement. It was held in the summer when most people are out of Athens anyway so the discomfort was not much. We are also a small country so it was easy to go in from the vacation spot for events of interest.

    Rio is also a touristy city, so maybe it will work out for them. I can see that for Chicago it would not pay particularly. Tourism is discouraged for the US, all that checking etc in airports does not sound tourist friendly.

    Greece has offered to be a permanent host, but it seems that there are a number of countries that disagree and want to hold the olympics. A bit like football prestige?

  12. anna v–
    I think from a commercial point of view, it’s also good for the Olympics to move around. They get more attention by being in different host cities. If they stayed in one place, there’d be no publicity associated with cities competing to host. There would be less for the color commenters to cover about the location (because it would be the same as last time). Etc.

  15. lucia,
    I think a ‘a bit tough’ is what nice people like you get called for attending a tea bag picnic. I think ‘a bit rough’ is for the President to accuse the insurance industry of being dishonest (from a Chicago politician!!).
    President Obama put his name and the office he holds on the line to sell a pork filled juicy deal for his pals in Chicago, in the midst of serious security and domestic issues.
    If anyone else had done this stunt, the failure of it would be the focal point of all press coverage. Instead, we get sour grapes rationalizations about how it was not important.

  16. Yea, looking at the Google satellite map, it is between the 94 spinoff and the 80 spinoff.

  17. Tokyo didn`t get it either, which means we will be spared alot of squandered tax money.

    No surprise to me about Rio; the politics really favor upcoming nations over US and EU venues.

    Pork? I`m sure you were railing against it during the two Bush terms that so disgusted Americans that we now have the Perfect Obama storm, right, Hunter?

  18. I know where Hunter is coming from; if Bush had tried to do something so insignificant and sing the praises of his home town I would have made comments like that too. But all Bush did was start wars.

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