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Associated Press
ATHENS, Greece -
Chicago was among the four cities picked as finalists
Wednesday for the 2016 Summer Olympics, setting the stage
for a high-profile bidding contest between candidates from
the United States, Europe and Asia.
Also making the IOC shortlist were Madrid, Spain;
Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Eliminated from the race were Doha, Qatar; Prague, Czech
Republic, and Baku, Azerbaijan.
The final field was selected by the International
Olympic Committee executive board.
The big four — Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio — all had
been virtually assured of advancing to the final stage.
The main issue had been whether Doha also would make the
cut.
The finalists now advance to a 16-month race that will
culminate on Oct. 2, 2009, with a secret ballot by the
full IOC at its session in Copenhagen, Denmark.
An IOC evalutation report assessing the technical merits
of each bid ranked Tokyo with the top overall marks,
followed closely by Madrid. Chicago and Doha were tied
for third, with Rio fourth. Prague and Baku were sixth
and seventh.
Chicago is a contender to take the Summer Olympics back
to the U.S. for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta
Games. Madrid is back again after a third-place finish
in the vote for the 2012 Olympics, which went to London.
Tokyo, which held the Summer Games in 1964, hopes to
bring the Olympics to Asia eight years after Beijing.
And Rio, which hosted the 2007 Pan American Games, would
be the first South American city to get the Olympics.
Doha, capital of a tiny but wealthy Arab Gulf country of
about 1 million people, had loomed as the wild card as
it sought to bring the Olympics to the Middle East for
the first time. It cited its hosting of the 2006 Asian
Games as evidence that it can handle the Olympics. Due
to Qatar's searing summer heat, Doha proposed holding
the games in October, outside the IOC's preferred time
frame of July or August.
Some rival bid officials had been worried that if Doha
made the shortlist, the city — while a long shot to win
— would have the capacity to take away crucial votes in
the early rounds of voting.
Cities that made the cut will have to submit their
detailed bid files to the IOC by Feb. 12, 2009. After
that, a panel of IOC experts will visit each of the
cities, tour the proposed sites and meet with bid and
government leaders. The panel will release an evaluation
report to the IOC members a month before the October
2009 vote.
The 2016 decision was the centerpiece of a three-day IOC
board meeting in Athens, the last before the committee
gathers in Beijing on the eve of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics.
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