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Finally, South America gets an Olympics. The
2016 Games are going to Rio de Janeiro.


      In a vote of high drama, the bustling Brazilian carnival city of
beaches, mountains and samba beat surprise finalist Madrid, which
got a big helping hand from a very influential friend.


      Chicago was knocked out in the first round - in one of the most
shocking defeats ever in International Olympic Committee voting.
Even Tokyo, which had trailed throughout the race, did better -
eliminated after Chicago in the second round.


      Rio spoke to IOC members' consciences: the city argued that it
was simply unfair that South America has never hosted the games,
while Europe, Asia and North America have done so repeatedly.


      "It is a time to address this imbalance," Brazil's charismatic
president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told the IOC's members before
they voted. "It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a
tropical country."


      The bearded former union leader disappeared into a huge group
hug with the joyous Rio team after IOC president Jacques Rogge
announced that the city won. Football great Pele had tears in his
eyes.


      Madrid's surprising success in reaching the final round came
after former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch made an unusual
appeal for the Spanish capital, reminding the IOC's members as he
asked for their vote that, at age 89, "I am very near the end of
my time."


      Samaranch ran the IOC for 21 years before Rogge took over in
2001.


      Chicago had long been seen as a front-runner and got the highest
possible level of support - from President Barack Obama himself.
But he only spent a few hours in the Danish capital where the vote
was held and left before the result was announced. Former IOC
member Kai Holm said that the brevity of his appearance may have
counted against him.


      The short stopover was "too business-like," Holm said. "It
can be that some IOC members see it as a lack of respect."


      Senior Australian IOC member Kevan Gosper surmised that Asian
voters may have banded together for Tokyo in the first round, at
Chicago's expense.


      "I'm shocked," Gosper said. "The whole thing doesn't make
sense other than there has been a stupid bloc vote."


      He worried that the shock exit could do "untold damage" to the
already testy relations between the IOC and the U.S. Olympic
Committee. They had recent flare-ups over revenue sharing and a
USOC TV network.


      "To have the president of the United States and his wife
personally appear, then this should happen in the first round is
awful and totally undeserving," Gosper said.


      The European-dominated IOC's last two experiences in the United
States were marked by controversy: the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter
Olympics were sullied by a bribery scandal and logistical problems
and a bombing hit the 1996 Games in Atlanta.


      Obama had held out the enticing prospect of a Chicago games
helping to reconnect the United States with the world after the
presidency of George W. Bush. He told the IOC earlier Friday that
the "full force of the White House" would be applied so
"visitors from all around the world feel welcome and will come
away with a sense of the incredible diversity of the American
people."


      Now, Chicago can only rue what might have been. And Obama's
gamble of expending his own political capital on the bid backfired.


      The last U.S. city to bid for the Summer Games, New York, did
scarcely better. It was ousted in the second round in the 2005 vote
that gave the 2012 Games to London.


      Tokyo did better than many expected by reaching the second
round. It had offered reassurances of financial security, with $4
billion already banked for the games.


      But the fact that the Olympics were held only last year in Asia,
in Beijing, handicapped the Japanese capital's bid.


      Its plans for a highly compact games, sparing athletes tiring
travel by holding all but the shooting within 5 miles of the city
center, were technically appealing. But the bid failed to generate
real enthusiasm, even in Japan. Tokyo had the lowest public backing
in IOC polls.


      Tokyo's final presentation Friday to the IOC, while smooth and
heartfelt, lacked the buzz that the Obamas and Rio generated. In
short, Tokyo was simply overshadowed, failing to convince IOC
members that it really wanted or needed the games.

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The 2016 Olympics are going to Rio de Janeiro,
putting the games in South America for the first time. Chicago was eliminated in the first ballot of
voting, a stunning defeat for the
city that was expected to be one of the two finalists.

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